You can't go back nearly 15 years, to a world without any real staple MMO, and say "hey, but it did really well" without taking that into account.
But there are pros and cons now. In other words, yes going back 15 years the game had no competition so that's a big deal. But it was also a very primitive time in terms of technology and for the genre. It was a low budget game, half the gamers didn't have internet at all and the other half only had modems, it had no previous experience to learn from besides UO and one or two other primitive things.
So fast forward to today, there is more competition but the market has grown massively, and we are all on broadband now too, and the server technology and gaming technology has moved on massively too. Also SOE have far more experience. As I said before, Vanguard is an example of a more recent MMO that aims at a more hardcore crowd, and that game did well at release. It only flopped because everyone bailed in a month because the game sucked, but the good numbers who tried it are the important thing. That's why I think even if EQN was made for a niche audience, it would still be a 500,000 size niche, minimum. That's just a guess but it's an educated guess.
Ok I'll bite on this because at least you put some thought into your response.
First: When you list a game like Minecraft and Angry birds, it's obvious you missed my point. Angry Birds is a free game that you can also spend a few bucks to buy more of.
No both Angry Birds and Minecraft have to be bought. And they sold millions, even though their graphics are weak.
It's also a simple 2D game that is single player. You also don't have to be online to use it. Minecraft was a major success because it was cheap and easy to make (edit: It was also the first of it's kind and pretty genius on a design level which overcame it's lack of graphics which in turn create a whole new "graphic style"). It's one of those once in a life time type of things. It also didn't have to support servers. People had to do that on their own. Less costs, less elements to design. Less money. But we're talking about graphics though.
Yes, we are talking about graphics and your original point is that nobody would buy a game that doesn't have cutting edge graphics, Minecraft wipes that point out.
Your second point, it still expensive. You still need the same kind of artists creating custom animations and a whole slew of shit. No one is going to put cash into a major project just to shoot for 200-300 thousand box sales (if that many). Devs can't just wip up an MMOG and launch it.
It will be but SOE can afford it. My only point is that the emphasis could be on gameplay which delivers the kind of game which people will want to play for 10 more years, not the SWTOR/TSW style of very high quality content but only lasts a month.
Your third point on sales, both AOC and WAR both sold over a million boxes. Rift sold close to a million. I don't really care about subs afterwards though for my point.
But that's the whole point, a million sales is less money than 500,000 people playing year after year.
What I was saying that you want that initial surge in box sales to help recuperate cash.
It doesn't matter how surging it is, what matters is the total you make back, and a million sales sounds nice but is no use to anyone if all million have bailed in one month. It's a simple sum, 1 million sales + a hundred thousand ongoing is < 500,000 sales, but 500,000 addicted fans for 10+ years.
Selling a super niche game without the quality of life features that are given in current day games will not sell a lot of boxes out of the gate.
But we've been through this. First off, 500,000 people is a lot of boxes. It's only WoW which changed peoples perspective on that. Secondly, everyone who tries to be the next WoW, failed.
Stop talking about EQ's numbers from 10 years ago. The market is a different place these days.
yes it's better...
There's not some magic cache of players sitting on the internet in pockets of 100,000s of people just waiting to play and buy the original EQ again.
Vanguard suggests you are wrong, 4 times wrong.
If you're launching an MMO, especially if you're Sony, you want it to make a splash in the marketplace. Neckbeard EQ isn't going to do that for you.
Why can't you understand this very basic point? The big splash you are talking about has only really been achieved by WoW. For the past 10 years everyone has tried to copy that, but most of them have failed miserably. What the industry was too dumb to realize is that although aiming at 10 million subscribers sounds like a good financial plan, the downside is that it's very high risk because you have to make a really expensive game to live up to that kind of competition, and if people then don't buy in to it, you are fucked. These neckbeards you like to talk down about constantly, are the type who don't even care about flashy production values. Just like Minecraft, they will buy a game because it's really fun and all their friends are becoming hooked on it.
