WOAH yea.. 2.4 million copies on launch day for a PC game

#1 That's why I don't get why people think an MMO isn't viable. Games like WoW turned complete NON gamers into hard core gamers. Over 8 million people across the globe are now playing WoW.

Buckle up and get those MMO's done! And go to IMGDC!

#2 Cool.

I still can't imagine paying to play it, or really playing it for free for very long. But it's damn cool.

#3 You don't have to be a hardcore gamer to play WoW, but I agree it's cool.

#4 I believe that Torque (Vanilla and TGEA) can handle Massive Multiplayers. I play Guild Wars alot, and sometimes it feels like it was done with Torque tbh.

#5 @Stefan - I know, the point was they took people who aren't gamers at all and completely brought them to the extreme other side of the gamer categories.

@James - I've been into the networking parts of TGE/TGEA quite a bit, and Vanilla TGE and TGEA are not suitable for thousands of people. With some modifications however, it can be made to handle thousands.

#6 Yes at least we have 2-3 shops now working on Indi MMOmiddlware.

Might be a market for mini mmo's... Where you lease a database server and license out a middleware
toolset to sit on top of Torque games. We need to get these FPS shooter server hosting folks involved as
they have the hardware and networking pipe.

#7 @Vashner - Companies like this already exist: www.onlinegameservices.com/. OGS not only will host, but actually will get you beta testers, customer/technical/billing support employees, etc.

I can't announce anything yet, but Fileplanet is in discussions with me for the launch of an Indie MMO platform at IMGDC!

#8 Jonathon... That's what I meant... Think my Vanilla in there confused you... I didnt mean straight out of the box... :)

#9 Ahh.. Vanilla = TGE. Got it ;)

#10 I think that when people say MMO's aren't really viable, they mean that an MMO competing in the same area as World of Warcraft isn't viable. For a small to mid-sized developer, there's simply no way they could hope to take on WoW in the "Hack'n'slash Fantasy MMO" department.

I'm not saying they can't design a better game, but it's like a couple of guys in a garage designing a car and hoping to compete with Honda. Even if they managed to design and build the better car, you're still probably going to see a lot more Hondas simply because those poor guys don't have the reach to get their design out there.

Bad analogy, sure - but the point still remains.

#11 @Phillip - That's a trick statement. NO MMO that has ever been made can compete with WoW. It has over 8 million subscribers, which is (last I checked) 4 times the amount of subscribers any other MMO has ever had, AAA or not.

Now, to say an Indie couldn't build an MMO to compete with SWG, The Matrix Online, Everquest (1 and 2), Lineage, etc. etc. is a pretty bold statement. Last I saw a post from Ritter, MoM was over 30k subscribers (compared to 35k that Matrix Online had last I checked and MILLIONS went into that game).

Indie MMOs are not just 'side projects' of people with dreams. They are 100% possible, marketable, and if done properly, able to compete with AAA titles. Some of the biggest names in the MMO industry are speaking at IMGDC because of this. If Indie MMOs weren't very possible at a high level, over half these speakers and sponsors wouldn't be on board.

#12 I fully believe that you can design an MMO that will gain popularity, and I fully believe that this can be accomplished by an independent game studio - MoM is a perfect example of a success story.

What I was attempting to point out is that it would be extremely difficult for an MMO to compete in the same space as WoW, and when people see that they tend to assume that it's simply not worth the effort to build an MMO.

I still stand by my assessment that for smaller developers, there's just no chance to take on WoW at its own game - but they can still be popular in smaller niche spaces. But indeed, that's how most indie titles work... they seek out a niche and fill it out very well instead of trying to encompass a broad range of gameplay types in a mediocre fashion.

And I could be wrong - look at Counterstrike, it started as a simple mod and ended up dominating the FPS landscape for years, despite Quake and to an extent UT being the powerhouses that they were.

#13 There is a huge amount of potential for indies in niche MMO markets. It's pretty exciting stuff! :)

#14 Again, WoW has nothing to do with MMO development. WoW is a freak of nature which has never and possibly will never happen again. NO developer, not even another AAA has a shot in hell of competing with WoW until some major changes to the industry happen which I'm not going to go into here. You seem to be implying that WoW is the end-all be-all of MMO dev and that everyone should look to it as a true AAA success story and that just isn't the case.

An Indie studio could create a AAA competable MMO, period. Will it compete with WoW? Probably not, but neither can the AAA companies, so why is it even in the discussion?

If you want to prove a point, change 'for smaller developers, there's just no chance to take on WoW at its own game" to "for smaller developers, there's just no chance to take on EQ2, SWG, Lineage, etc. at their own game" to which my reply is: Yes they can, and they will...

Edit: In fact, we will see Indie MMOs with MORE subscribers than AAA in the not too distant future, especially with the things that will be announced at IMGDC. Indie developers have a lot more passion about their product and they typically don't have the 80 lb gorrilla of a publisher sittin on their shoulders making the creative decisions.

#15 To say that World of Warcraft has nothing to do with MMO development just isn't true. Any title that has a massive portion of the market is going to influence the development of similar projects. Features, Interfaces, etc. etc. are copied and imitated - sometimes in a better fashion, sometimes in worse - in other titles all throughout the genre.

Will World of Warcraft ever be conquered? Maybe. It's not outside the realm of possibility, but it would take a huge investment from a larger development house and a lot of time to accomplish a feat like that. Even then, that's down the line.

In the middle to smaller spaces, that games like EQ2, City of Heroes, etc. occupy indie games have a decent shot (And are already making lots of progress), and I support that. My original point is thusly: When people think that MMO development isn't doable, they're usually scared off because of WoW sitting there in the corner eating up all sorts of market space. If instead they look at the middle tier of MMOs that already HAVE indie games becoming successful, it becomes a much more favorable prospect.

#16 To say that World of Warcraft has nothing to do with MMO development just isn't true. Any title that has a massive portion of the market is going to influence the development of similar projects. Features, Interfaces, etc. etc. are copied and imitated - sometimes in a better fashion, sometimes in worse - in other titles all throughout the genre.

Will World of Warcraft ever be conquered? Maybe. It's not outside the realm of possibility, but it would take a huge investment from a larger development house and a lot of time to accomplish a feat like that. Even then, that's down the line.

In the middle to smaller spaces, that games like EQ2, City of Heroes, etc. occupy indie games have a decent shot (And are already making lots of progress), and I support that. My original point is thusly: When people think that MMO development isn't doable, they're usually scared off because of WoW sitting there in the corner eating up all sorts of market space. If instead they look at the middle tier of MMOs that already HAVE indie games becoming successful, it becomes a much more favorable prospect.

#17 To say that World of Warcraft has nothing to do with MMO development just isn't true. Any title that has a massive portion of the market is going to influence the development of similar projects. Features, Interfaces, etc. etc. are copied and imitated - sometimes in a better fashion, sometimes in worse - in other titles all throughout the genre.

Will World of Warcraft ever be conquered? Maybe. It's not outside the realm of possibility, but it would take a huge investment from a larger development house and a lot of time to accomplish a feat like that. Even then, that's down the line.

In the middle to smaller spaces, that games like EQ2, City of Heroes, etc. occupy indie games have a decent shot (And are already making lots of progress), and I support that. My original point is thusly: When people think that MMO development isn't doable, they're usually scared off because of WoW sitting there in the corner eating up all sorts of market space. If instead they look at the middle tier of MMOs that already HAVE indie games becoming successful, it becomes a much more favorable prospect.

#18 @Phillip holy crap man, stop hittin refresh! Yet again you have misread my post. I didn't say WoW had nothing to do with MMO development. Obviously it does. What it doesn't is represent how MMOs are and/or can be built today. WoW was a freak of nature, nothing can touch it as far as success at the moment. LOTRo might be a good competitor, but doubtfully will surpass 2 - 3 million subscribers.

WoW is copied a lot, true, but I disagree that an Indie couldn't overtake it. People play the crap out of it because the gameplay is phenominal for nubs and getting better for high levels. WoW looked beyond the typical player and delved into the psychology of all types of players, including NON-players. They catered to EACH of the categories and built a solid game.

I've seen people in this community who can build graphics and models on the same caliber as WoW. I've been in contact with a few developers who worked on Blizzard games and they are the same mix of talent as you find in this community. Sure, money makes things easier as far as time and energy, but it in NO way makes the game. Matrix Online spent MILLIONS and sucked horribly going from over a dozen servers to 3 and eventually sold to Sony because their business model for MMOs was virtually the only way to make money off it.

#19 Having played close to a dozen mmos starting from The Realm and Ultima Online, my feeling about why WoW was so much more successfull then the others was the fact it is much more of a casual MMO. You can max level, even at a casual play time per week, in one month. This is better for casual players so that they don't feel they have to commit their life to the game in order to get somewhere.

I had friends that I kept from the other MMOs I had played over the years and we tried out WoW on launch I had fun for a bit max leveled and said wow this doesn't have much to it really. I said this because I had played so many others where 3 months in you were like wow check this out this is something new. Now I had also brought gamers who had never played a mmo at all to WoW. This is how the difference came. Almost everyone that was a hardcore gamer and had played other MMOs went wow this sucks and left to try other MMOs within a couple months. The people who had never played an MMO were still playing it a year later and bought the expansion on release day and didn't stop playing the expansion for days straight trying to get all the new content. These people were NOT hardcore gamers before this game.

The real key to their success in my opinon was taking an MMO and making it a casual game. For fun in WoW a lot of people go in play a few battlegrounds for the PvP fun and then log off an hour later. Where as for other MMOs you normally had to devote several hours to any playing time so that you had time to go in find a group, get to the place, get through the place and get back to the city. WoW kept that part in with dungeon raids.

But I think some companies are looking at it differently now too. The makers of Vanguard (I've tried it some and it's fun and am waiting to get more free time to enjoy it more) wanted to make a game more involved but they also wanted to get a specific market. They didn't want to try and make the ultimate every type of player likes the game mmo, they wanted to make the people who enjoy the games we enjoy will like this game mmo. They even said they didn't ever plan on having a ton of players. They just wanted a small group of loyal, involved players. I think this shows a new way of thinking in MMO development, make an mmo for a certain crowd and keep that crowd happy to keep their bussiness. That means you only have to keep the game balanced for one type of player

#20 The mold we have been forced to accept will be broken.

With all due respect to the existing big MMO's. Time for new customer freedom

from being forced to pay for constant nerfs and fee for beta testing there products.

Enough of being a slave to the rich that can afford to fly to these SOE meetings and dress up an elf
then complain the grind is too ez because they got from 1-65 in 4 days and had to stop only to use the bathroom and log into an 24x7 India coin pharm sweatshop to buy $1000 dollars with of basically illegal
I.P property. (being silly there)

That's the old school.. time for new casual micro MMO's. Fun to play AND you can have a life too.

You won't need 12 hours a day to beg a guild to let you join etc.