What is a good lifespan of a MMORPG?

[uberkingkong.8041]

Let me ask something, do you think it was a good move that GW1 created GW2 and they focused 100% on the newer game?

Now GW2, whats a good lifespan of a MMORPG? SO that a new version of it comes out?

[Omega.6801]

As long as the playerbase is active enough to support the gameplay and enough cash is spent to keep the development lights on, the game is not dead or in maintenance mode i.e. has not found the end of its lifespan. There is no predetermined ideal lifespan of a MMO. It runs as long as it makes sense for its company to keep it running.
Now let me ask something. Is this another thinly veiled GW3 thread?

[EphemeralWallaby.7643]

The lifespan is until I quit for good.

~EpWa

[Astralporing.1957]

16 minutes ago, uberkingkong.8041 said:

Let me ask something, do you think it was a good move that GW1 created GW2 and they focused 100% on the newer game?

To me? No. I still think they could get far more out of GW1, and i think they killed its development too fast. To Anet? Likely it was, although it's hard to say without seeing the internal expenses/revenue data and stats.

16 minutes ago, uberkingkong.8041 said:

Now GW2, whats a good lifespan of a MMORPG? SO that a new version of it comes out?

For players: as long as devs keep sustaining it at a level that you still find fun. For devs: as long as it's profitable enough.

Notice, that with single-player games, sequels are something you use to capitalize on playerbase of a game that was popular at some point in the past. You generally don't run into an issue of that old game directly competing with the new one, because players just move on (or sometimes can even play both, with no issue). With long-term engagement games like MMORPGs however it is different. Here, by making a sequel, you put it in a direct confrontation with your previous title. So, you either split playerbase between both titles, while maintaining both of those games (minimal gain, but double maintenance costs), or you kill your old title (either effectively, by annoucing that it will get no more releases and goes on maintenance mode - or, even worse, literally, by shutting down the servers). In this case your maintenance costs do not go up due to having to develop two games instead of one, but you lose your old playerbase at some hope that it might migrate to the new game. This is a risk - if the game is significantly different (and usually it is, because if it's not, why did you even bother to make a sequel, instead of just doing an engine upgrade to old game), those old players might find they do not like it all that much after all, and just go away.

So, basically, with MMORPGs, devs are highly incentivized to keep them going as long as possible, until they just do not have any other choice.

 

[uberkingkong.8041]

23 minutes ago, Omega.6801 said:

As long as the playerbase is active enough to support the gameplay and enough cash is spent to keep the development lights on, the game is not dead or in maintenance mode i.e. has not found the end of its lifespan. There is no predetermined ideal lifespan of a MMO. It runs as long as it makes sense for its company to keep it running.
Now let me ask something. Is this another thinly veiled GW3 thread?

GW1 had enough to support the gameplay and enough cash.
Did it reach an end of a lifespan?
Do other factors go into consideration like tech, AR, VR, AI, game engine, core game, etc.?

[Astralporing.1957]

Just now, uberkingkong.8041 said:

Do other factors go into consideration like tech, AR, VR, AI, game engine, core game, etc.?

For MMORPGs there are two factors that are important. First (and the most important), is profitability. If the game stops being profitable, it's the end of the road for it. Second, is the devs' willingness to keep it going. Sometimes even though the game is still profitable and could get going, the studio behind it just has enough and wants to do something new.

All the other considerations are far less important, and only to the degree that they might indirectly affect the first two.

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

Even today an MMO getting to 10 years of active content development(yearly expansions or seasonal content releases) is pretty rare. Getting to 15 is a huge accomplishment, and getting to 20 is something only a handful have done(again with active content development and not just the servers are still up)

GW2 is already past its first major milestone, and even if it died when it hit 15 it would be in a pretty small number of MMOs to have lasted as long as it did.

[Omega.6801]

15 minutes ago, uberkingkong.8041 said:

GW1 had enough to support the gameplay and enough cash.
Did it reach an end of a lifespan?
Do other factors go into consideration like tech, AR, VR, AI, game engine, core game, etc.?

Can't say much about GW1 as I wasn't playing it. I know that it looked outdated even for the time and while it seemed to have some neat things like henchmen/heroes and good buildcraft to keep it going even with very little players playing (I thinkk you can basically play it solo at this point beside PvP but correct me if I'm wrong). It's tech also lacked behind so the step up to a new title might have made sense. I look at freedom of movement f.e. where GW2 is just miles ahead een when just comparing the core game.
Did it reach the end of its lifespan? Again, there is no st ideal lifespan. Lifespan is a very complex term for MMOs that can't just be defined in "the perfect lifespan for every MMO in every case is 5.739 years under all circumstances whatsoever".
New technology has to be considered but also isn't the be all and end all standard for everything. Sometimes the early adapter has the cutting edge but sometimes the early adapter is the first to run its busines into a wall and only the second and third adapters can profit from new tech. VR for example has been around for decades at this point and it has been promised to be "the next big thing" for just as long...and it's still niche. Sure, the niche is getting bigger and more and more big companies are making products for it...it's still a niche. Same for AI. It barely took off last year, it's still kinda trash adn people are already asking if it could revolutionize gaming, if it could replace writers or artists or whatever. Yeah, maybe it could in ten years. That doesn't answer the question wether or not it should for once. It doesn't answer the question wether or not we actually want this or not. And it is for sure not at a point where it can write our quests for a game that will be launched next year.

Edited March 9 by Omega.6801

[Kiki.9450]

Making GW2 was a good move in my personal book. GW1 lacked some things to draw me in really, like the ability to jump (huge for me honestly) and forcing player race selection to "male" or "female" only (i.e. I don't like playing as a human in a fantasy world with non-human, clearly intelligent creatures). GW2 remedied this and I was hooked. What keeps me going is the regular different approach this game has to other MMOs on the market today, namely the focus on exploration and open world and minimal vertical progression once at level cap (which has also never moved from the original 80).

How long should an MMO live for? How long do players want to keep playing it and how long do the devs want to keep supporting it? That's how long an MMO should live for. And that answer seems to vary game to game, but it does appear there's a handful of MMOs still kicking from the mid-to-late 90s, so that's reason enough to say that GW2 can keep on keepin' on, if the players and Anet still want to keep it going.

[Danikat.8537]

How long is a piece of string?

Some of the oldest MMOs are still going and are over 20 years old now. For that matter some of the MUDs (multi-user dungeons) which pre-dated MMOs are still going too. On the other hand there's some games which have come and gone in the time GW2 has been online and are considered to have had a good run because they lasted more than a year.

The aim for any MMO is to stay online (and keep getting played and updated) as long as possible, I don't think any of them are built with the intention that after some number of years they'll be replaced or closed down, it only happens when something goes wrong. There's a lot of reasons that can happen, the most common are probably fans losing interesting to the point where it's unprofitable (especially if the game wasn't that popular to begin with) or the developers run out of money and can't keep supporting it. But all kinds of things can happen, maybe they don't have a cohesive long-term strategy, or the studio is a bit of a 'cult of personality' and when the person driving the vision leaves things get disjointed and start to fall apart. Or they get bought out (or sold) or the publisher goes under because of unrelated problems and then the new owners have different priorities, or they lose the rights to the underlying IP. You could group some of them together but in a sense there's as many reasons as there are failed games.

But it's not like traditional single-player or small multiplayer games where the plan is always to make and release one, maybe support it for a few years with updates and possibly an expansion and then use the profits to make the next game.

GW1 and GW2 are a bit of an anomaly in that sense. GW1 was very unusual when it launched in being an MMO without a subscription, that was almost unheard of at the time. Even then I don't think they planned to replace it with a sequel, but making and selling annual expansions proved impractical (especially when each was also designed to work as a stand-alone game). Even then according to Anet part of the reason they decided to make GW2 instead is they kept coming up with ideas they wanted to use but which wouldn't work in GW1. I'm not sure what they were but based on ideas they experimented with in GW: Beyond I suspect dynamic events were one of them.
 

Just now, Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

Even today an MMO getting to 10 years of active content development(yearly expansions or seasonal content releases) is pretty rare. Getting to 15 is a huge accomplishment, and getting to 20 is something only a handful have done(again with active content development and not just the servers are still up)

GW2 is already past its first major milestone, and even if it died when it hit 15 it would be in a pretty small number of MMOs to have lasted as long as it did.

You're right, but to be fair that's partially because it's only about 25 or 26 years ago that the concept of an MMO was possible. There were some graphical MUDs online before then, but they were more like lobby games. I remember when Ultima Online launched in the late 90's and firstly the whole concept seemed novel and strange and secondly the total, global population of MMO players was estimated to be under 100,000 people. At the time it wasn't even sure the internet would catch on.

[Kiki.9450]

1 minute ago, Omega.6801 said:

Did it reach the end of its lifespan? Again, there is no st ideal lifespan. Lifespan is a very complex term for MMOs that can't just be defined in "the perfect lifespan for every MMO in every case is 5.739 years under all circumstances whatsoever".

I understood GW1 "reaching the end of its lifespan" as Anet deciding they wanted to do things with GW1 that they feasibly couldn't (such as playable not-humans), hence one good, rare, reason to create an MMO sequal.

[Wolfofdivinity.6251]

Everquest will survive world War three.

[Labjax.2465]

4 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

To me? No. I still think they could get far more out of GW1, and i think they killed its development too fast. To Anet? Likely it was, although it's hard to say without seeing the internal expenses/revenue data and stats.

For players: as long as devs keep sustaining it at a level that you still find fun. For devs: as long as it's profitable enough.

Notice, that with single-player games, sequels are something you use to capitalize on playerbase of a game that was popular at some point in the past. You generally don't run into an issue of that old game directly competing with the new one, because players just move on (or sometimes can even play both, with no issue). With long-term engagement games like MMORPGs however it is different. Here, by making a sequel, you put it in a direct confrontation with your previous title. So, you either split playerbase between both titles, while maintaining both of those games (minimal gain, but double maintenance costs), or you kill your old title (either effectively, by annoucing that it will get no more releases and goes on maintenance mode - or, even worse, literally, by shutting down the servers). In this case your maintenance costs do not go up due to having to develop two games instead of one, but you lose your old playerbase at some hope that it might migrate to the new game. This is a risk - if the game is significantly different (and usually it is, because if it's not, why did you even bother to make a sequel, instead of just doing an engine upgrade to old game), those old players might find they do not like it all that much after all, and just go away.

So, basically, with MMORPGs, devs are highly incentivized to keep them going as long as possible, until they just do not have any other choice.

 

Indeed, also because of the sheer amount of time things take to make. GW2 took over 10 years to get to the point it's at now and that's not including the time it took to create the initial game. A new MMO might seem light in content and features by comparison, and primarily becomes a draw for newness, freshness, different ways of doing things for those who are unsatisfied, rather than depth and breadth.

It's like in programming when you're like "this old thing is a mess, let's start from scratch" and then you slowly realize just how much time it's going to take to get the new back up to speed and all the while, it's steadily amassing its own set of messes, just in different ways this time. Not to say you can't ever make improvements with fresh and new program or game compared to old, but that the sheer amount of time it takes is easily underestimated and fans will remember what you didn't include (The Sims series and its fanbase is evidence of that).

[firedragon.8953]

GW1 wasn't an MMO.

The best lifespan of an MMO is theoretically forever. It is a "virtual world" after all.
Obviously, forever is likely impractical due to technical and creative restraints. So, I guess "as long as possible" is the next best answer.
With that in mind, having both evergreen and innovative content is the difficult dance devs must do.

[Cyninja.2954]

16 hours ago, uberkingkong.8041 said:

SO that a new version of it comes out?

Minimum aproximately 3-5 years after the previous MMO saw no development.

If the studio decides to make a followup MMO, which so far has almost never worked. Go ahead, read up on successor MMOs.

Even the, at the time, a large studio and MMO decided against it and cannibalized developer resourced to turn their project into a hero shooter.

 

[uberkingkong.8041]

4 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Minimum aproximately 3-5 years after the previous MMO saw no development.

If the studio decides to make a followup MMO, which so far has almost never worked. Go ahead, read up on successor MMOs.

Even the, at the time, a large studio and MMO decided against it and cannibalized developer resourced to turn their project into a hero shooter.

 

Could the issue be lack of MMORPGs making a new game?

Is the term MMORPG too loose? GW1 an MMORPG? What about a text based game, commonly called MUDs. Its just a name though, multi user dungeon how is that different than MMORPG, where you have multiple people and dungeons.

So with tech not being a factor to many, MUDs or MMORPGs text based like mystic-adventure, where you have multiple people around in open world doing things, should just keep doing what its doing, or is the MMORPG scene not yet evolved into having lifespans. 

Just an example of tech evolution and early starters, like textbased MUDs which are they MMORPGs? When you hear someone say MUD thats automatic thinking of text based game, even though MUD doesn't have any correlation to text only.
Then you know like tech text based only because the new stuff wasn't available. Should games like from the 00s 10s have a lifespan, when new tech comes out, which really makes things dumb down, like a text only game, should these a bit more modern games do something similar like a GW1 to GW2?

Tech wise, I see a lot of games where freebuild. Where you switch to a build tool and just start building whereever you want. There could be even more things, but thats one thing I've noticed.

Like text based games they don't graphics. GW1 people say they can't jump in the game. If enough limitations come should a MMORPG just continue or is that a signal of an end to the lifespan. And like this person said which is mainly true, MMORPGs tend to not make a new version. Is that good or bad?

Edited March 10 by uberkingkong.8041

[Ashen.2907]

As long as it takes to recoup initial development costs. Anything after that is gravy.

[Dawdler.8521]

In my experience anything above 4 months. Because that's around the time they die because of either bad core gameplay, bad payment models, being completely unfinished or actions by the developers.

If it survives that, it's a zombie. 

ESO is an example of this. It released in April and was dead by the summer. Alliance wars was completely broken on a fundamental level, balance was broken, developers straight up lied about the EU servers and then refused to fix anything by having complete radio silence, population probably dropped by 90%+ within those months. Then of course they had to reform the entire game within a year by introducing f2p etc.

GW2 mostly avoided this particular stage because of being buy to play and having dedicated developers early on to actually fix issues (remember WvW and invisible zergs, lol)? . I doubt it would have been in the shape it is now with subscription. At this point its like a Volvo with a million kilometer on the odometer. It can die tomorrow and it can also live forever.

 

[Cyninja.2954]

3 hours ago, uberkingkong.8041 said:

Could the issue be lack of MMORPGs making a new game?

It's likely a combination of high risk, high cost, very high barrier of entry into the market and lack of success in the market successors.

As mentioned: the few occasions where a successor MMOG was made, those games pretty much never succeeded the previous games success and even worse, often flopped.

Meanwhile there are sufficient entries and new MMORPG releases, constantly. Most fail shortly after launch or remain niche games at best. When there is this amount of failure of entering the market at such a high cost, development is not that hot.

On the flip side: look at mobile games, they are easy to make, turn a profit fast, basically kitten money and what do you know: every studio wants to have a couple of high yield ones (or at least the publishers do).

Quote

Is the term MMORPG too loose? GW1 an MMORPG? What about a text based game, commonly called MUDs. Its just a name though, multi user dungeon how is that different than MMORPG, where you have multiple people and dungeons.

GW1 is not a MMORPG. It's by their own definition a CORPG (Competitive/Cooperative Online Role Playing Game) and lacks many of the features attributed to MMORPGs.

MMOs and specifically MMORPGs developed out of MUDs, the core pillars being the games being more "massive" (both in development as well as players), the games being always online (not all MUDs were) and the focus on role playing mechanics. MUDs were far more niche and most often far more user based aka chat based and less game developed (though this depends on the individual MUD).

Edited March 10 by Cyninja.2954

[Mistwraithe.3106]

On 3/10/2024 at 1:13 PM, Labjax.2465 said:

It's like in programming when you're like "this old thing is a mess, let's start from scratch" and then you slowly realize just how much time it's going to take to get the new back up to speed and all the while, it's steadily amassing its own set of messes, just in different ways this time. Not to say you can't ever make improvements with fresh and new program or game compared to old, but that the sheer amount of time it takes is easily underestimated and fans will remember what you didn't include (The Sims series and its fanbase is evidence of that).

Quoted for truth, many devs don’t understand that the gnarly complex parts of a code base are quite often there for a reason 😀

There are times when starting again is the right move but it’s a big call and needs to be considered carefully.

Edited March 11 by Mistwraithe.3106

[uberkingkong.8041]

How about passion should that be a factor in MMORPG ideal lifespan?

Ex. first 5 expansions is fun, but the next expansions to come out are just not interesting anymore. Would that be an indicator that for an ideal lifespan and good time to move on the next?

It seems like regular games they usually do like 2-3 expansions and then move onto the next game, should MMORPGs move on too?

I really like how GW1 moved onto GW2, with the titles and playing the previous game meant something.

Also, should ideal lifespan take into consideration new players? So things like how fresh the server is or game is would that be a factor in an ideal lifespan of an MMORPG?

[kharmin.7683]

2 minutes ago, uberkingkong.8041 said:

How about passion should that be a factor in MMORPG ideal lifespan?

Ex. first 5 expansions is fun, but the next expansions to come out are just not interesting anymore. Would that be an indicator that for an ideal lifespan and good time to move on the next?

This is highly subjective.  I've seen some posts where players have mentioned that they very much enjoy the latest release.  Also, we don't know the number of players who do enjoy it as the forums represent such a small, limited scope of the total player base.

[Surelia.2651]

On 3/9/2024 at 3:40 PM, Wolfofdivinity.6251 said:

Everquest will survive world War three.

This made me spit up my coffee... 😂

Welcome to EQ: the Keith Richards of MMOs

[uberkingkong.8041]

3 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

This is highly subjective.  I've seen some posts where players have mentioned that they very much enjoy the latest release.  Also, we don't know the number of players who do enjoy it as the forums represent such a small, limited scope of the total player base.

I was looking at this thread,

  

11 hours ago, vicky.9751 said:

EOD was a bit of a miss for me personally. I refunded it when they allowed it. It was a bit predictable 

My mom got me this game when it was sold at my local walmart on CD and now i'm 25. I was ok with the fact that maybe i'd just outgrown this game since EoD was not my cup of tea, but i had heard news of the 4th expansion coming out a while ago. I don't even really remember the  current cast of characters this game had lmao. I was getting a bit tired of brahm and taimi.

 

What caught my attention was predictablity, is this a factor when a game is just too predictable. When something is too predictable does it lose value?

Also, outgrown the game. What causes someone to outgrown a game? Is it evolved too much its not the same anymore, if so at that point is a new game better? The people that have outgrown a game, they still play games right? So if outgrown a game and playing games still, is that an MMORPG ideal lifespan issue?

[Danikat.8537]

11 minutes ago, uberkingkong.8041 said:

How about passion should that be a factor in MMORPG ideal lifespan?

Ex. first 5 expansions is fun, but the next expansions to come out are just not interesting anymore. Would that be an indicator that for an ideal lifespan and good time to move on the next?

It seems like regular games they usually do like 2-3 expansions and then move onto the next game, should MMORPGs move on too?

I really like how GW1 moved onto GW2, with the titles and playing the previous game meant something.

Also, should ideal lifespan take into consideration new players? So things like how fresh the server is or game is would that be a factor in an ideal lifespan of an MMORPG?

"Passion" is impossible to measure, especially based on forum posts. According to some people World of Warcraft has 'died' every single time it put out an expansion because each one was so bad most players quit as a result. That's obviously not true because it's still online and still played regularly, and there's no reason to think those types of posts are any more accurate for other games. That's not to say the people posting them are wrong about their own opinions, but that's all it is, their own opinion (and maybe that of their friends who will of course have similar preferences). They don't speak for everyone and can't possibly know what the majority of players actually think, even if they try asking first. Only a small minority of players ever visit a game's forum and even then if a topic looks like it's just an endless circle of people ranting about how bad the game is now it's highly unlikely people who are actually enjoying it are going to want to waste their time trying to convince anyone when the chances are the people posting aren't interested in anything other than venting.

Also this has been convered several times in this thread already but you cannot compare the release schedule of MMOs to conventional games. They are intentionally designed, from the start, to be different and that's often part of their appeal for both developers and players.

For new players it can often be a good sign that an MMO is a few years old, because it shows it's gotten past that initial period when it might never actually take off, they know it's more likely to be a game they can commit to without worrying it will disappear when they start getting into it. There used to be (and maybe with some games still is) a concern that they'd be at a disadvantage due to being 'behind' the day 1 players, but I think most games have taken steps to address that. That's why GW2 gives everyone a level 80 boost when they buy the game, it doesn't take long to get to level 80 anyway but it's a good way of showing new players they won't have to face a long struggle to catch up and will be able to jump straight into the newest areas if they want to.
 

11 minutes ago, uberkingkong.8041 said:

What caught my attention was predictablity, is this a factor when a game is just too predictable. When something is too predictable does it lose value?

Also, outgrown the game. What causes someone to outgrown a game? Is it evolved too much its not the same anymore, if so at that point is a new game better? The people that have outgrown a game, they still play games right? So if outgrown a game and playing games still, is that an MMORPG ideal lifespan issue?

Both of these will have different answers depending on who you talk to. I'm sure some people consider predictability to be a problem, but others like it - they want to know what they're getting from a game and what they can expect in future.

What causes someone to outgrow a game depends a lot on the person. In my experience it's often to do with their life, not the game. A common example is they started when they were a teenager, but now they're an adult with a family and a job and the freedom to persue other hobbies and can't (or don't want to) spend the same time they used to on the game. I know a lot of people who consider it a selling point if a game is very short (as in 2-5 hours in total) because if it's longer they don't expect to finish it. I'm in my late 30's and a bit of an anomaly among my friends because I do like long games, but I don't mind if I never finish them.