EA: Running MMOs Since Back In The Day When They Didn't Want To Run Any MMOs

Gamespot interviews EA’s Frank Gibeau on those newfangled MMO thingies.

We already have two operating MMOs. We launched a game called Ultima Online in 1997, back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, and that’s still in business. It’s still got hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Then there’s Dark Age of Camelot, which we picked up when we bought Mythic; we also have a situation where we have well over 100,000 subscribers.

Well, those are orders of magnitude greater than the numbers rumored for both of those titles. SirBruce, the NOTED INDUSTRY ANALYST, speculates that UO’s subs are 75,000 at while DAOC’s may be as low as 45,000. My gut feeling is that both of those numbers are low, but not *that* low. But hey, he’s in EA management and I just work on those wacky web games.

Also, he thinks that competing with WoW on their own terms is eminently doable:

 

There’s always that ultimate killer app that comes out and creates a mass-market opportunity, and WOW is that for the MMO category. And what they’ve done is create millions and millions of players who are now comfortable with the way MMOs play, they’re comfortable with the models, and they’re looking for more.

Our job is to go after that new market and really grow a business. If it’s a situation where you’re directly competing with WOW, so be it. The key is to make sure that your product is different from theirs and bring something fresh to the equation. Something that fans will find exciting, and we think we have that in Warhammer. It’s also important for us to come out with new concepts and different IPs.

Note: insert some snark about how wildly different the Warcraft and Warhammer IPs are here -> <-.

GS: An IP based on a popular science-fiction franchise, perhaps?

FG: No comment [laughs]. So, we look at the models in Asia, where there are bigger games than WOW. Now, no MMO is bigger than WOW globally, but the market is growing here in North America. And it’s not just with high-end MMOs. You’ve got a lot of lighter titles like Runescape and, hell, even Club Penguin is a bit of an MMO.

So I see it as much more diverse market than simply, “I must beat WOW.” I thank WOW for a great few hundred hours of gameplay as well as making a market. But we’re gonna compete there and we’re going to succeed there in a lot of different ways by coming at it from a lot of different angles. I see it as a very lucrative, long-term part of our business.

Sure seems to be a lot of smack talk lately coming from the EA monolith.

  • Laag

    Electronic Arts (EA) Q2 2000 Quarterly Report, filed 8/14/2000
    Form 10-Q, Securities and Exchange Commission

    “We Have Very Limited Experience with Online Games and May Not Be Able To Operate This Business Effectively”

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

    Um, isn’t EA the leader in FAILED multi player games?

    From Kesmai studios 1999-2001ish, to the Sims Online?

    EA will compete with Blizzard when pigs fly.

  • http://hgamer.blogspot.com heartless_

    MJB needs to get EA on the same page as him. Either they are or are not directly competing with WoW. I think EA believes differently than MJB and that will spell disaster.

  • Vetarnias

    Heh. DAoC only came under EA’s control when it purchased Mythic, nearly five years after the game launched. In other words, doesn’t count.

    As for UO, how much of a risk is it to launch something based on the long-standing franchise by Origin, whose best titles came out long before EA acquired the company? Well, as much as I want to give EA credit for launching UO, didn’t they also destroy the franchise in the process, most notably plans for UO2, not because it wouldn’t be successful, but because it might prove too much so for the sake of the original game’s subscription levels?

    Acquiring well-known properties long after they have been proved successful (by others) isn’t exactly my idea of taking risks. EA seems destined to be sticking to safe, expensive, dull choices, more so than any other company out there, and snatching up other companies where the real creativity asserted itself and where a few moneymaking franchises existed (another case in point, besides Origin and Mythic: Maxis).

    Nowadays I avoid most of what is put out by EA like the plague.

  • http://whaledawg.com Whaledawg

    How many subscribers does a game need to keep going? It would seem they’re losing money on 45k.

  • Mist

    Probably not too many. The bandwidth for games is cheap, and their server hardware is likely very consolidated now, with computers being many times more powerful than when DAoC originally launched. It probably only takes a handful of techs to keep the servers up and running, and with veteran players, CS calls are probably fairly low.

  • Iconic

    “How many subscribers does a game need to keep going? It would seem they’re losing money on 45k.”

    You only lose money if you invest a lot to keep it going. At this point the entire staff for DAOC has got to be maybe 3-4 core people and a few dozen CS staff. An MMO that’s been around that long pretty much takes care of itself.

  • Yeebo

    I seriously doubt that UO has “hundred’s of thousands” of subs. In fact I doubt it’s ever had much more than 200K. Of course I also seriously doubt that DAoC only has 45K subs. I’ve always taken Sir Bruce’s numbers with a grain of salt, personally.

  • Merkwurdigliebe

    I wonder if the “no comment” line about sci-fi-based MMOs means “Yes, we have one in development secretly” or “What is sci-fi? Some sort of new D&D module?” I guess people look at AO and Matrix Online and think to themselves “They must not be popular because of the sci-fi setting…”

  • Paul

    Number of people logged into daoc at this moment: 2121 worldwide
    45k or >100k
    Ill go with the former estimate myself.
    Maybe 50k people dont play any more but forgot to cancel the subs :O

  • http://hgamer.blogspot.com heartless_

    @Paul

    45k accounts, 45k more accounts for buff bots.

    /rimshot

  • Walter Yarbrough

    In general terms, the reason DAoC sub numbers vary widely is that the US numbers are generated daily, in a report that was distributed internally very widely.

    It was always a topic of conversation, as we tried new initiatives, worked on conversion, retention, released balance patches, expansions, etc.

    However, the foreign partners numbers came in monthly, in a report that was not distributed widely or easy to decipher. All told, they were roughly equivalent to the US numbers.

    So, oftentimes, a reported number was only the US number, not the total number, leading to a published number that was roughly half of the total.

    What’s going on here? I don’t know. But the above offers some insight.

  • Plagio

    I posted this in the wrong thread so I’ll just repost it here.

    I came here to state that DAOC got a lot better when you and the rest of the heads moved on. EA came in and then all of a sudden bugs were fixed and classes balanced in a matter of months.

    But then EA doesn’t deserve the credit either. The people who are GOOD at making games do. The people who did what you couldn’t do exist, but there are dinosaurs standing in the way.

  • Walter Yarbrough

    Plagio -

    Who are you talking to – Scott, who was a programmer on DAoC.

    Or me, the Producer of DAoC for a long time (pre and post EA), as well as a Group Producer of DAoC, TSO, and UO (post EA)?

    Both of us ‘moved on’

  • Plagio

    Sorry Walt, I didn’t mean you at all.

  • Scott Jennings

    Well, then, it’s even more ironic, since I had about as much decision making power on DAOC as Sarah Palin does over the GOP.

  • Plagio

    We all know what you did so I’ll just repost this and let you decide where you fit in: “EA came in and then all of a sudden bugs were fixed and classes balanced in a matter of months.”

  • Scott Jennings

    Uh… good thing I left, then! Damn me for standing athwart progress.

  • http://family.travin.com/ Georgia

    Someone forgot to polish his tinfoil hat today… programmers don’t make executive decisions on game design or production direction. Designers and managers do that. Hi 2 u. Lern about software engineering 4 teh win.

  • Soulflame

    Scott and Walt, evil overlords of halting improvements to MMOGs since 1999.

    I hope you feel shame, you bastards.

  • Lenin

    Everything can’t be Scott’s fault, because actually, everything is MY fault. So there.

  • Lenin

    Actually come to think of it, I blame John Austin.

  • Walter Yarbrough

    Well, ultimately, if there are any accusations in the pre-and post EA era, it really should be directed at me . . .

    So, I’ll take the blame for not fixing the bugs and balancing the classes before EA . . .

    And I’ll give the credit to the team for fixing the bugs and balancing the classes after EA . . .

  • Merkwurdigliebe

    EA fixed bugs? EA balanced classes? EA freed the Jews? EA “polished your knob?” EA makes the trees grow?

    …

    EA sells football games. No more. No less.

  • Vetarnias

    And hockey games. Don’t you ever forget it.

  • IanB

    The only person I blame for the class balance issues was Mackey. Well and I guess whoever put him in charge of class balance and left him there. They can have a blame nugget too. Delicious fried blame.