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What does success mean in MMOs?

Jeffrey Steefel, Executive Producer of Lord of the Rings Online, seems to be giving lots of interviews these days, but that's probably because it's convention season. When not pushing Mines of Moria, the coming expansion for LotRO, Mr. Steefel is busy thinking hard about how MMOs can reach out to the console market, and what success means in the MMO industry. Here are some of his more recent thoughts:

Eurogamer: How do you define success, though, when you don't have ten million players to brag about?

Jeffrey Steefel: The first threshold is, can you make a viable game, 90 per cent of people don't get past that. In some respects success is just getting past that. The next is, do you have an ongoing, viable, profitable business that is growing? Definitely hit that mark.

Are you considered one of the leaders in the space? No question we've hit that mark, in fact most articles that you guys and other write, if they're referencing a couple of MMOs it tends to be WOW and Lord of the Rings

And then, there's another level of success, which is reaching a certain mass-market critical mass, which to be totally fair, only Blizzard has achieved completely so far. We think that we are the game that has the most likelihood of being the second to do that, but we're not there yet.

That's a combination of expanding worldwide like we're doing - that's something that'll help expand the critical mass of LOTRO, it's definitely something that helped WOW tremendously, obviously. It's a challenge, but we're confident that we can get there, especially with something of this broad appeal and high quality.

The more and more I read what this guy has said, the more and more I tend to agree with him.

For the full interview, please check here.