I just finished reading a post from Syp over at Waaagh about his predictions on how Warhammer Online will fair in the MMO market and what he thinks are the keys to getting it there. Syp lists 10 points that he believes will influence the outcome of WAR’s fate down the road, starting with number one, a smooth launch.
You could argue the importance of this being the first thing to make a game successful, which I am. It’s important no doubt as many games have shown in the past with rocky starts – but overall many have recovered at one point. Age of Conan numbers wise, even though I’m no longer a big fan, shows a smoother than average start for an MMO can rocket the game right to the top of the charts. But for the long term health of the game competitevly in a dog eat dog MMO world, I’d say it’s not really that important. Syp I must respectfully disagree, it’s a good but it’s not number one good. I’ll agree with the other 9 points you make as strong but for me my number one would be different.
My number one reason an MMO will either succeed or fail is accessibility. WoW is a shining example of this in that they have succeeded even beyond their own expectations. World of Warcraft is such a popular game for the most part because you don’t need the latest and greatest computer available the year after next to run it. It runs great on average systems and runs good on below average, that’s key. For all the shine and polish of the latest and greatest video and game effects out there they tend to alienate all the more casual gamer base who don’t meet the minimum system requirements. And WAR looks like it’s not going to be any different unfortunately. Please don’t take this as me beleiving the game will fail but I beleive unless you design the game to be able to run on older model systems it won’t be WoW great. That’s my 2 cents, for what it’s worth.
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June 19th, 2008 at 8:27 am
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