Everyone's A Prophet This Week

So far be it for me to buck the trend!

  • This is going to be a slow year for MMOs. Last year saw the release of most of the projects that began development before WoW shipped. (The remainder – Age of Conan and Warhammer Online are set to release this year, and Pirates of the Burning Sea this month.) Now we enter the Desert of Azeroth, as the extinction-level-event that is World of Warcraft’s unbelievable success caused everyone in the MMO industry in 2005 to go:
    whoa.jpg

    In the next few years following, we’ll see the results of everyone trying to go all aikido and step where WoW isn’t. But for this next year or so, you’re going to see the effect of an entire MMO industry three to four years ago going “Holy crap. They sold how many boxes? And our entire development team is in a WoW guild? Hmm.”

  • Speaking of those above three MMOs, they’ll all be pretty successful, if not astounding million sellers, which means that every pundit will wax profoundly about how they’re all failures, despite keeping their dev teams paid and their publishers afloat. Note: MMOs can be successful revenue sources even when not produced by Blizzard! Specifically, PotBS will be a niche title a la Eve which does well long term but nothing spectacular out of the gate, Warhammer will grab over a million subscribers (counting both the US and European markets) which will make it the second biggest MMO, disappointing everyone who wanted it to be Teh Giant Slayer. Age of Conan will do somewhere in the 200K range, much less if there are launch issues (it remains to be seen if Funcom’s learned from Anarchy Online). No one will care about the much-vaunted nudity. It didn’t save Shadowbane, either.
  • Speaking of Blizzard: Starcraft 2 will slip to 2009, sorry. However, fear not – the PC market will still be in a Blizzard hammerlock, as the next World of Warcraft expansion pack will ship just in time for the Christmas rush, dwarfing any other game’s launch that year. Note: I did not say “any other MMO game”. I meant “ANY OTHER GAME”. The PC market, by and large, is rapidly becoming WoW-driven. Proof? In November, almost a year after Burning Crusade’s ship, amidst all the new hotness Christmas releases like Orange Box and Call of Duty 4, Burning Crusade was #9 in the PC charts for the month and World of Warcraft was #5. This doesn’t track subscriptions – these are box sales – new accounts.  In terms of subscribers, WoW will finally plateau after cracking 10 million, mainly because there is no one in WoW’s target market left. The big news at next year’s BlizzCon will be the announcement of Blizzard’s next MMO, which will not be World of Starcraft or World of Diablo.
  • EA Austin — sorry, Bioware Austin will finally announce that yes, they’re working on Knights of the Old Republic Online. Everyone will yawn since that was leaked all over the place LAST year. Or maybe those leaks were MISDIRECTION! And they’re really working on Peggle Online. That Gordon Walton fellow is crafty.
  • Free MMOs will continue to pull in more free users, more paid users, and more money than the vast majority of “old school” MMOs, as Raph Koster is vindicated in spades, over and over, when people start to actually notice that more people play Maple Story than World of Warcraft.
  • Second Life will no longer be all over the news as even Reuters figures out that a lot more people talk about Second Life than actually participate in it. They will continue to have server and client issues, and near the end of the year the first Second Life clones that were conceived back when Second Life was the new hotness hit the market. I don’t know what they are off the top of my head, and you won’t either, because as Linden already knows and these new kids will learn, enabling a game wholly based on user generated content in a 3D space is REALLY REALLY REALLY freakin’ hard.
  • 2008 will be to Facebook as 2007 was to Myspace – no one will care any more, some hot new thing will come along, and everyone currently working on Facebook-centric startups will feel awfully silly (but still make hojillions of dollars).
  • The election matchup will be Barack Obama vs. Mitt Romney, and Obama will win in a landslide. I’m willing to fudge on the Republican side given Iowa’s results but it’ll still be a Democrat landslide. Ron Paul will run from the right as a Libertarian candidate (I know, he said he wouldn’t, HE FIBBED DEAL WITH IT) and break 5%, which dwarfs the LP’s previous best of 2% but is still a statistical blip.

Feel free to tell me I’m full of it! Bonus points if you (a) tell me I totally forgot about Darkfall or (b) complain that Shadowbane didn’t actually ship with any nudity.

  • http://nerfmyshaman.blogspot.com Dajay

    Have to say I agree with all points.

  • http://www.trentish.com Trenton

    I agree with all points except for the last. This election is still wide open and I really think it’s going to be one of the most interesting in recent history. Maybe that’s coming from a polisci buff, but it really is going to be fun watching how it turns out.

    Also, if Bioware really has been purposefully misleading us, they better damned well stop what they’re doing and start really making a Star Wars MMO. Of course Peggle Online would probably be deemed “more addictive than heroin” by the FDA.

  • VPellen

    I’ll agree with everything except two points:

    I see the next WoW expansion as being “Good, but not great”. Intuition tells me that we’re going to start seeing some really broken mudflation kicking in. But I could be wrong.

    And on the side of Second Life, I thought it had [em]already[/em] fallen out of the news spotlight?

    Darkfall will maintain a dedicated (but dwindling) fanbase, release two new “gameplay” videos around April and October, and have beta promised in the first quarter of 2009.

  • VPellen

    God damn it, I can never remember which tags make italics here.

  • Rhino

    I think you’re right about Raph being vindicated eventually.

    I look at the upcoming BIG HUGE games, hoping for some kind of “old school UO meets wild west in space”, or something crazy – and then I remember that I’ve been playing Travian for three months without even realizing I got hooked.

    I think I’m too old now to feel comfortable buying games that are the hotness to seventh graders – plus I have a job and a family – so I don’t really have time for them anyway. SO, my vote for eventual gaming world phenom goes to the funky “casual games” that stealthily steal away what little free time I do have left.

  • Fragged

    I think you underestimate the impact of Blizard’s willingness to reset the gear curve in an expansion. Clearly when you look at the Burning Crusade, they reset everyone to ground zero in way you really haven’t seen in other games. Mudflation is a problem when it means long term players have a real advantage over others, but by effectively replacing all the gear in an explansion they simply rewrite the playing field and eliminate the issue, it’s more like a fresh mmorpg than a continuation, from a gear perspective. Sure well geared people will level easier and faster, but if the last expansion is any indication, by 80 no old items will remain useful (and any tht slip through the cracks will be nerfed in patches relatively quickly.)

  • Toastrider

    What, no predictions on precasting?

    Beyotch.
    :)

    –TR

  • http://eatingbees.brokentoys.org Sanya

    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/business/31virtual.html?em&ex=1199422800&en=e568f9b906490b51&ei=5087

    Since that article went up before yours did, I guess you can declare victory on the point of the mass media noticing Second Life got more print than users. ;)

    Also, Mitt Romney? I don’t see it. I’m willing to bet a shiny nickel he burns out before Easter.

  • Njal

    Bah, way too safepredictions Lum. I agree with all of them however so come up with something out there so I can call you am idiot.

  • http://derspatchel.livejournal.com Spatch

    Our local Dumb News For Stupid People channel ran a teaser a few nights ago that touted “3D Internet Shopping! Browse aisles of local stores in the comfort of your own home!” And wouldn’t you know, the footage in the promo is of a Second Life store.

    I’ll also add that this teaser was hyped first, before the news item “…and a heartbreaking interview with the parents whose two children died in a tragic house fire two days ago.” Between this, Meet The Spartans and the continuing writer’s strike, I’m almost beginning to think that in terms of mass media at least, 2008 is the Year We Finally Become Creatively Bankrupt.

  • Wanderer

    Browse aisles of local stores in Second Life? Now there’s a scary thought. If I’m shopping online, a) I want to find what I’m looking for via text search, not by wasting my time watching a virtual me walk around virtual aisles in a virtual store, and b) I do not want to have to wait in line at the checkout behind a giant purple furry penis.

    As for the Next Big Thing, a game in which players don’t have to feel “left out” because their real lives preclude a minimum 4 night a week raiding schedule seems like a good candidate. I was thinking of that while I was waiting for a battle rez in SSC last night. Well, actually, I was thinking “I finally get into a guild that’s doing 25-mans, and here I am kissing floor”, but close enough.

  • Raz

    In an upcoming year where so many events are foreshadowing the upcoming end of the American Empire, having the election as a ‘blurb’ at the end rather amuses me.

    MMOs ain’t gonna matter when the dollar tanks into oblivion.

  • Steve

    No “Scott reveals what he’s been working on the past year”? Bummer.

  • http://www.lotd.org Hades

    All hail Scott Nostradamus Jennings!!

    I think you are right about where AOC subs will hover. Even Shadowbane reportedly sold 150k copies, and AOC seems to be much better.

    I’m not sure about how well Warhammer will do over the long haul (12 months). Just from looking over the community buzz it seems that game really needs to overcome a “been there, done that” feeling. If they don’t grab people with their RvR early enough and show how they are different than WoW, then a lot of people will just go back to their WoW PVP server. We’ll see though.

    Make sure we do a check later in the year to see how right you were.

  • chabuhi

    Scott, get out of my head.

  • Simond

    Raz: “MMOs ain’t gonna matter when the dollar tanks into oblivion.
    Apart from the bit where the only big player in the MMOG market actually owned by Americans is Mythic-EA, you mean? (Blactivizzard = French, SOE = Japanese (ultimately), NCSoft = Korean, CCP-White Wolf = demented Viking hermits living on a volcanic rock, etc, etc)

    Or were you talking about playerbase?

  • http://mundy.typepad.com Mundinator

    I’m gonna agree with Rhino, Travian is the one game that surprised me this year. I am actually going to suggest that browser games have a MASSIVE surge this year in America. Looking at the number of people playing them and how much money people spend per month, its more than a WoW subscription. I know I spent $50 in a month when I was really trying to get a leg up. My co-workers were as well.

    Browser Games…that’s where I would put my money.

  • http://hgamer.blogspot.com heartless_

    The Free MMOs continue to be economic losers, but accounting hits. They are all fairly susceptible to any web 2.0 wrinkles. And for the most part, the only evidence for them being worthwhile to pursue is the idea that they can be made cheaper. That will change when the bigger companies start playing around with them, like SOE.

  • Drey

    Ah crap, my wife will quit our WoW guild if Peggle Online ships!

  • http://ambernight.org Amber

    Was “someone will shoot up a school/church/mall/Arby’s/nunnery and it will be blamed on video games” too obvious? Never mind, that was rhetorical.

    Hillary will crush Obama. Not that I approve, I got a crush on Obama too. But she’s got to do something pretty stupid not to win the nomination, and while Hillary Clinton is many things, she’s not stupid. Expect a John Edwards veep. On the Republican side, all I can say is *PLEASE* let it be Huckabee. I know, I know, not a chance in hell. But the Democrats have shown a unique talent in grabbing defeat out of the jaws of victory, and I’d like to hedge my bets.

  • Sweetmeat

    Hmmm agreed on all but one point. Am I the only one who thinks it will be Hillary vs Huckaby and she will win by a slim margin after overcoming Republican hacking of electronic voting machines?

  • Aufero

    Reuters doesn’t learn that fast and Romney isn’t acceptable enough to the fundies to be the Republican party’s candidate. Aside from that, you’re probably right on all counts.

  • http://forge.ironrealms.com Matt Mihaly

    Grabbing 1 mil subscribers for Warhammer Online wouldn’t even come close to making it the second largest MMO. Runescape already has more than 1 mil subscribers AND they have another few million non-subscribing players.

    –matt

  • http://www.damnedvulpine.com/ J.

    Shadowbane had topless harpies, but they were a mid-level mob and many probably never even noticed them. Sadly, the succubus was nowhere to be seen at ship.

  • Tem

    Warhammer will not bag 1 million users. I ‘spect it will peak at less than 500k. IF Funcom learned from Anarchy Online? I can answer for you: they didn’t. It will be a launch fiasco the likes of which we haven’t seen since, well, Anarchy Online…or Vanguard. Pick your poison.

    Blizzard’s next MMO will be Starcraft or Diablo related, i’m guessing Starcraft. Yes, SC2 will slip to 2009. The Starcraft MMO will debut sometime in 2010 or 2011 after the obligatory SC2 expansion that adds Firebats to the Terran arsenal.

    The free MMO will never be a major player. Why? Those who are interested in that sort of entertainment don’t mind – and are already – paying for it. Those who aren’t won’t bother. MMO gaming, like MTV, requires a selective audience. This ‘offer it for free and they will come’ scheme is a pipedream in a field of dreams.

    Obama to win the election? LOLz! Pleeeeaaase. Though I will vote for any of the current democratic candidate hopefuls, they will not win the 2008 election and, in fact, I predict it will go to the Republicans in a historical landslide. Why? All of us far more liberal thinkers tend to forget about all those RED states during the lull between elections. Do you really think the rural south and midwest is going to allow a black man or a woman into the oval office? Keep on dreaming, my friends. We’re going to be swimming in red for many years to come.

    The rest of it I agree with enough not to refute it.

  • http://ve3d.ign.com/ Apache

    Warhammer might bag 1,000,000 users in its lifetime, but i doubt it will surpass 500,000 active accounts at any given time.

    Age of Conan I see in the 300,000 range.

    Pirates of the Burning Seas will have under 100k.

  • http://mogb.blogspot.com Phil

    Warhammer Online and Age of Conan will both underperform. The fact is that the market for dark and gritty games is not that big. A mmorpg has to keep you, month after month. The market that will pay to keep coming back to world largely devoid of whimsy, color, joy and beauty is awful small for a AAA title.

    Technical and design excellence will sell plenty of boxes but the genre will drive them away once the wow factor fades.

  • http://beafraid.com hellfire

    Uh, Pirates is bad. BAD.

    Or are you assuming that between now and launch they’ll make melee combat good, re-code the entire UI, make the AH interface tolerable and magically find some way to make a computer that ran vanguard acceptably at 1680×1050 achieve more than 9fps in resolutions higher than a 1024×768 window?

    I want to like the game. It’s a fun concept and (if my machine ran it) combat/sailing around/etc is actually pretty neat.

  • Mordur

    Anyone going to predict another EVE Online dev scandal?

  • IanB

    Personally I don’t think Pirates is as bad as advertised by some of the word of mouth. Some things about it work very well – the economy for example, and the ship to ship combat is fun. It just needs a lot more polish in the ‘when you’re not on your ship’ parts. Specifically I think the animations for running around, etc., really need to be smoothed out. Heck just doing that would make the iffy melee combat a lot more tolerable. The only big problem I have with the UI is the default colors are nigh-unreadable and the buttons are too small at 1920×1200. Speaking of resolution, I’ve had no problems running it in 1920×1200, but I never played VG to have another hoggy program to compare it to.

  • http://beafraid.com hellfire

    The melee combat is pointless. Dirty Fighting is ridiculously good. At 25 I was to the point where I dropped a bleed on the 1..6 opponents around me and then cleaved them all twice. I haven’t played the other swashings higher than 10, but they seem to be following the same pattern. The problem is that it’s not just easy, it’s trivial. And it’s not a level of trivial that can be tweaked, it’s going to take a complete revamp of how things work to make it more than stupid. I board a ship and 2-shot the captain inside 10 seconds. HOORAH!

    The AH is horrific. I’d take the SWG AH (when it was only working 1/3 of the time) over the Pirates one at this point. The economy IRL is one big guessing game, I don’t need that in my MMO. I’m selling product X for Y doubloons. Buy me? Y | N. Making that process harder for no reason is ungood. Crafting is a complex process. It’s quite nice, really. Whyfor is there no clear and easy consignment system? I need a 20 medium hulls and I’m paying ‘x’ doubloons. The concepts are EASY, it’s just not easy in the game (or even present).

    Pirates COULD be a good game. But it won’t be.

  • http://relmstein.blogspot.com/ RelmsofRelmstein

    I predict:

    Warhammer to have at least 60% of World of Warcraft’s numbers by the end of 2008.

    Blizzard’s next MMO will be based on Starcraft.

    Obama and Huckabee to win the primary

    Age of Conan and Pirates of the Burning Sea to stay above 200k though not by much.

    The writers strike not to end until April which will cause a nice boost to the game market.

  • http://ve3d.ign.com/ Apache

    oh, and Bill Clinton will be our next first lady. that is all.

  • http://haven.thratchen.com isildur

    … yay, nobody’s Pirates predictions really scare me. That’s what I like to see: consensus on not-scary.

    hellfire: making the process harder for no reason would, in fact, be stupid. Good thing I didn’t do it for no reason, huh?

  • Alzheimers

    The big EVE news will be that there’s nothing new. CCP is busy working on their World of Darkness property, and the main feature from that (Ambulation) probably won’t bee seen in EVE until 2009.

    They keep hyping up Factional Warfare as some fix-all for the basic problems of blobbing and lag. What they don’t understand is that players don’t need *another* excuse to fight. They want more versatility in the ways the fight. All they’re going to do is move the blob from fleet combat (where the game essentially becomes Powerpoint Online) to the empire regions where the carebears and macrominers already lag up the joint.

    The only thing that would make EvE players excited at this point would be Atmopsheric Combat — something they demoed once about two years ago, got everybody hyped up about, and promptly forgot. Being able to play in a Fury3/Terminal Velocity style environment would be a radical shift from the game’s core philosophies, but with some new Space MMOs on the horizon (and Infinity-Quest for Earth in eternal development but with some damn tasty teaser vids) CCP really needs to reshift focus. 40k simultaneous players in one universe is a great accomplishment, and the Trinity graphics update is uber shiny for the GFX whores. Now they need to leverage their technology to making the game accessable by more than the hard core PvPer, which means more play options and less lag. And god help them if there’s ever announce an Elite Online or Homeworld Online.

  • Mist

    Or you know, Privateer Online, or Wing Commander Online… theres a ton of unused space IPs floating around, well not floating around, owned by EA infact, that could be leveraged into new MMOs.

    As for all these predictions of Warhammer’s success, I’ve played Warhammer and well… *NDA*
    ;)

  • Angel13

    Don’t underestimate Warhammer Online. Most people who discuss this particular product are almost always pulling their predictions from the current MMORPG player base and estimated potential new players.

    Warhammer has a VERY devout following in the table top war-game sector. Games Workshop is THE most successful TTWG manufacturer in the world.

    Those who play the Warhammer 40k TTWG will play Warhammer Online till a WH 40k MMORPG is developed. Games Workshop is KNOWN for brand loyalty… I would almost say 1 mill subscribers may be a conservative estimate. It could be as much as double that.

    Nay-say this if you like. I pull this estimate from years of experience as a manager of a tabletop game shop. Games Workshop product was my bread and butter… it sold itself.

  • chabuhi

    Peronally, I’m holding out for De Bellis Antiquitatis Online or, say, a Carcasonne MMO.

  • M Grey

    If all those games with “Sim” in the title can be used as a gauge for future success, Spore probably has the best chance for selling more boxes than this year’s WoW expansion. Assuming Spore doesn’t get pushed back again, again.

    Otherwise you’re probably right, Scott.

  • http://www.raphkoster.com Raph

    I like any predictions that say I will be vindicated.

    Of course, I tend to think I get more vindicated every year. Someday I will be 100% vindicated, and probably dead.

  • http://mythicalblog.com Jeff Freeman

    > Someday I will be 100% vindicated, and probably dead.

    Then we’ll note, “Well… Raph did say he’d be dead someday. I guess he was right about that, too.”

  • blachawk

    I disagree on a few points:

    Warhammer will NOT hit a million subscribers. I think they’ll be lucky to maintain 250,000 subscribers (only counting North America and Europe). Mythic is hoping for lots of WoW refugees, but I think after playing for a month and realizing the gameplay isn’t nearly as compelling as WoW’s, most converts will go back to the characters into which they’ve already sunk years of their lives.

    The democrats will not win in a landslide, unless you consider a landslide to be 52% of the vote. Don’t be fooled down there in liberalville Austin. Despite being inundated with news, TV shows, and movies that declare the only ‘smart’ choice is to vote democrat, much of the American public is still very conservative with their vote.

  • =j

    I think that SW:G categorically proved that rabid fan-base is not a strong indicator for game success.

  • Michael Pearson

    WotLK prediction: They’ve told everybody (I can’t remember where) that it won’t reset gear, and that your L6 epics won’t be replaced by greens at level 72. So it’s still worth progressing through BC content.

    I reckon they’re lying and that the first drop I get off a mob in Northrend will instantly devalue everything else I’m wearing.

    I’m not saying this to be bitter – I don’t grind, so I’m not going to lose much, I still actually enjoy all of my playtime – I’m just saying it because new, easily obtainable shinies suck jaded players back in to the game.

    I don’t think that WotLK will be as big a change as BC was, though. The opening questlines for BC are just _so much better_ than the late 50′s content in Azeroth that I don’t really think that they can make a leap that big again.

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