Closings, Alarums, Excursions And Wetsuits

Shane Kim, head of Microsoft’s Game Studios division, let slip during an interview during DICE that, yes, Marvel Online is dead, again. Because, well, there can be only one.

When we first entered into the development and agreement of the development of ‘Marvel Universe Online,’ we thought we would create another subscription-based MMO. And if you really look at the data there’s basically one that’s successful and everything else wouldn’t meet our level or definition of commercial success. And then you have to look [and say]: ‘Can we change the business model for that? Is that really viable given how far we are in development? And so forth. Does Marvel want to do that?’ There’s a whole bunch of factors.”

surfergirl.jpgIf you believe anonymous gaming rumor-mongerer/ Obama supporter “Surfer Girl”, well, LucasArts believes there can be only two, and since they’re working internally, according to her, on an MMO based on their OMG THIS WILL BE THE BEST VERSION OF STAR WARS EVER NO REALLY WE KINDA GOT IT WRONG WITH THE GUNGANS AND ALL BUT THIS TIME WE KNOW WHAT WE ARE DOING REALLY upcoming intellectual property (a term that becomes ever looser with Lucas the more Star Wars movies come out), and well, they already have this MMO, see, except, well:

Star Wars Galaxies will shut down within a year after the release of the new MMO. The Artistic Lucases think that they have the only IP that can pose a serious challenge World of Warcraft and find that the setting of KOTOR is too niche to be a threat. They apparently expect the new Star War MMO to have at least three million subscribers by the end of the first year.

My immediate, visceral response is that if the NGE didn’t kill SWG, it literally cannot be killed. No, really. Don’t try. Trying to unplug the servers will result in SWG, its hour come at last, slouching towards San Francisco to be born.

 

But all is not lost: we here at Broken Toys are all about responding to our readers and people following referral links!

 

  • http://www.david-mcgraw.com David McGraw

    >>Lucases think that they have the only IP that can pose a serious challenge World of Warcraft

    I think people should stop worrying about “competing” against World of Warcraft. Just concentrate on building a damn awesome game, and people will come. There are plenty of gamers out there that are hungry for MMOs, and there are even more out there that haven’t even touched an MMO yet. Use it for inspiration, yes, but blatantly going after it, wanting to claim superiority, should be on the back burner.

  • http://dropbearsguild.net Athryn

    The more a company makes noises about how their game is going to be an awesome wow killer, the less likely it is to be so. Blizzard didn’t go around telling everyone it was going to be the next big thing when they were making their game. As McGraw says, just focus on making a *good* game.

  • http://www.damnedvulpine.com/ J.

    Yeah, because WoW’s success has everything to do with IP.

    And I’d heard about Marvel MMO being kapoof for, well, about a week or two now, but I was just wondering when Cryptic would admit to it. I guess they can still keep the video up on their site if they wanted, but it’s kind of irrelevant now. That Marvel MMO has been passed around like an underaged hooker all over the place, and Microsoft still isn’t going to be interested in publishing anything that they don’t think will rake in trainloads of money. And after so many games they released failed to do that, they’re much more skeptical than they used to be.

  • Merkwurdigliebe

    So there’s a new Star Wars MMO in the works that is going and/or meant to replace SW: Galaxies, and it’s not Bioware-/KOTOR-related? AND it’s meant to be a WoW killer?

    Heh. Unless it has Proprietary Fractal Boob-Jubbling technology allowing for real-time melon manipulation, and boobs that cast soft-edged shadows and use inverse nippomatics, AND it allows you to be a Jedi in real life… I really don’t see anything to get excited about.

    Lucas and his various companies have a lot of cash to flush, so they are welcome to try and woo my interest.

    But I hear good things about The Force Unleashed.

  • http://www.david-mcgraw.com David McGraw

    This PFBJ tech as peaked my interest. Let’s get to work on that.

  • http://www.lotd.org Hades

    SWG 2 ain’t gonna fly. They killed the name Star Wars + Online. KOTOR is the only other product that has a cool universe and lots of name recognition.

    Oh well, I won’t be touching this new MMO with a 10 foot pole.

  • Rand0m

    If they do it right this time, you know a bunch of people will jump on the game regardless of who made it.

    Star Wars is one of the most popular franchises in the world. Even Legos makes Star Wars toys. LucasArts knows they can get alot of people if they do it right.

  • http://www.damnedvulpine.com/ J.

    Yeah, but if they kill SWG at any time, LucasArts will need to brace for the pitchforks and torches. You think NGE pissed people off, just think about the people who kept playing it through all the shit. It’d be enough to make SOE smell like roses forever.

  • Merkwurdigliebe

    If they kill it, they could offer SWG customers something special like a couple free months of the New Star Wars MMO (NSWMMO), a custom light saber color, or lapel pin.

    I remember when Earth and Beyond died, CCP offered E&B customers a free month of EVE-Online.

  • http://www.damnedvulpine.com/ J.

    That assumes that game companies can be expected to understand the concept of poaching, and how it can be applied to your own products instead of just those made by competitors. This is why MMO sequels are dumb, but in this very particular case I’d say it would be far dumber, if there really is a new Star Wars MMO in the works by someone else, to kill SWG to spite the faces of everyone who still plays it.

    LucasArts had as much to do with NGE as SOE did.

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  • http://www.thisisnotacommunity.org D-0ne

    So does this mean that SOE will get to screw up another MMRPG in place of SWG?

    In my opinion any title taken away from SOE will be improved. If L.A. takes SW away from SOE it can only get better.

  • http://www.damnedvulpine.com/ J.

    If LucasArts takes SWG away from SOE, it will not be SWG.

    MMOs don’t survive publisher changes well. The only ones that have changed publishers have been failures, Matrix Online included. Take SWG away from SOE and you might as well kill it, and for the sake of those still playing SWG, that would be a bad thing.

    NGE was only bad because it arrogantly assumed what current players wanted doesn’t matter. This would be the same mistake twice, from a PR standpoint.

  • Rand0m

    I think from a business standpoint, LucasArts thinks its alot wiser to try and get back the people they lost from pre-NGE instead of worrying about the current SWG population.

    If SWG dies, those peopel who played it will go to this new one anyway.

  • http://www.damnedvulpine.com/ J.

    “I think from a business standpoint, LucasArts thinks its alot wiser to try and get back the people they lost from pre-NGE instead of worrying about the current SWG population.

    If SWG dies, those peopel who played it will go to this new one anyway.”

    Sigh. No, no they won’t. See above. You DON’T make a new MMO and just expect people who are playing a current MMO to just leave their old lives behind and do something totally different. Whatever reasons there are to play SWG now, that it’s based on Star Wars are not the only ones.

    Christ, did we learn NOTHING from NGE? That was a lesson that should have been learned before NGE anyway! Oh wait, it already was.

  • Freakazoid

    I always thought KOTOR was a niche title, too. Glad they aren’t going that route.

    I don’t have any previous attachments to SWG, so a brand spankin’ new SWG will get my attention.

  • http://hitnrun.blogspot.com HitNRun

    The most painful part of this spate of Wowaphobia is that, currently, WoW blows nuts. Its ship has sailed for a good chunk of those 10 million, who are being held to the game by nothing but grinding Arenas and dailies. It wouldn’t take much at all in terms of a quality new sandbox to reel in plenty of Azerothians eager to (at least) try something new.

    WoW is by no means a spent force, and any game – even a great one- might have trouble catching on if it releases, say, in that two-month window after an expansion, certainly. But WoW has definitely entered that phase of past frontrunning MMOs where its invincibility is directly tied to a lack of lustrous alternatives.

  • Merkwurdigliebe

    I guess a good example is EQ and EQ2. Did people move to the sequel from the original. I imagine some, but I don’t thin EQ2 has the same numbers, does it?

  • Steve

    “I guess a good example is EQ and EQ2. Did people move to the sequel from the original. I imagine some, but I don’t thin EQ2 has the same numbers, does it?”

    I don’t think so, but part of that is the higher hardware requirements of EQ2. Also, people still play SWG? Who knew?

  • http://hgamer.blogspot.com heartless_

    I think only a minority of people would blame LucasArts for pulling the plug on SWG. Most people would blame SOE for not making the “right” game in the first place and for following up the “wrong game” with bad decision after bad decision. Sure, a lot of things can be traced back to LucasArts, but LucasArts is just protecting their IP. It is still SOE’s fault for delivering a flat product in the first place and failing to manage it properly in the long run.

    It would be a nasty fight between SOE and LucasArts for each company to save face, but in the end SOE is the one that has the most to lose. 50,000 angry fans is nothing to LucasArts. 50,000 angry ex-customers is not something SOE can take lightly. People disappointed in Star Wars Galaxies are a lot more likely to hate SOE than Star Wars and will be more than willing to latch onto the next SW MMO project as long as it is out of SOEs hands.

  • IMM (Scylla)

    I play SWG and have loved and hated it all at the same time for some of the idiotic things. I would hate to see the hard work that people have put in to building up their characters and lives on the game to be thrown out. It would be sad, not to mention the friendships that people have built over the years in SWG. I would miss all my friends and would be upset to lose everything I had built up.

    I have a friend who plays WoW and actually likes it very much. I have tried many other games but always find myself back to SWG. If this new Star Wars MMO is going to be coming out, what is the expectation for the time frame. Is this just speculation or is it actually something that could happen?

  • http://www.damnedvulpine.com/ J.

    Surfer Girl is an industry rumor monger. But she’s been mostly right thus far.

  • Mark

    Maybe they’ll have a launch deal that you can start Star War MMO at a level equal to the level of your highest WoW character plus one..

  • nerd gone bad

    If Blizzard actually puts out Starcraft Universe, I think we could consider the mmo market in near total lockdown. I would further predict that a Starcraft Universe MMO would garner subscription numbers exceeding WoW currently AND they would still maintain their WOW subs. In fact…if they roll a special sub for both games, all other AAA MMO publishers might as well just find a new field of business.

    It’s a shame Lucas Arts didn’t approach Blizzard to do the Star Wars MMO. Star Wars + WoW Casual Friendly/Polish/Smoothness + Playable on MANY Systems = $$$$$$SCORE$$$$$$

  • http://www.bruceongames.com/ Bruceongames

    I am a member of a private forum for industry professionals, some of whom have admitted that secret stuff has leaked out this way. And others have pointed out where these blogs can be very mistaken. So don’t take them as gospel.