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E3 2009 was rife with Persistent World Shooters (PWSs), a close cousin of the MMOG. What must these developers do to prove their games and, in bigger terms, their niche has what it takes to crack a tough market? We examine the obvious and the not-so-obvious factors in PWS success and continue to offer a complete slate of E3 2009 coverage in today's Loading... How Can PWS Spell Success?

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The Pulse

You vote with what you view at Ten Ton Hammer, and the result is the Ten Ton Pulse (What is Pulse?).

Here's today's top 5 Pulse results this week:

  1. World of Warcraft
  2. EverQuest 2 (UP 1)
  3. EVE Online (UP 3)
  4. Age of Conan
  5. Star Wars: The Old Republic (UP 12)

Biggest Movers in the Top 20 today :

  1. Global Agenda (UP 43 to #19 )
  2. Runes of Magic (UP 5 to #19)
  3. Atlantica Online (UP 6 to #12)
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Some of you might remember Fury, Brisbane developer Auran's lightning-paced, PvP-driven online game. If your character ran around with a gun, Fury would have been called a persistent world "shooter", might have been the first to make it to market actually, but instead it was magic in melee in lobby and instance style setting. Fury didn't go over well and despite shifting into free-to-play two months after its October 2007 launch, went into the scrap heap in August 2008.

I mention Auran's flop because E3 2009 was ripe with games that, like Fury, run a fine line between MMO and online shooter. Like Fury, the fact that you could craft, buy, sell, grab quests, and interact with other players in game-influencing ways (getting into guilds, etc.) means that at least the graphical "lobbies" meet the classical definition of the MMOG - more than 92 players pursuing game objectives in a single area.

A number of games we saw at E3 were built on this premise, for example: CrimeCraft, Huxley, Global Agenda, and to a lesser extent APB. I make APB something of an exception because combat occurs in the open when criminals break the law and enforcers chase them down and everyone else watches, but only select enforcers and criminals can actively participate to avoid imbalance. The non-participants can do things like call in the crime, for example. But the rest of these PWSs are fairly straightforward hub-and-instance shooters, albeit with very interesting ideas on how core gameplay ties into character and guild development and overall story.

My final thought on Fury is that, at its core, it was simply a game before its time. Communication with other players was spotty or at best underutilized, and games like Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead had yet to set the stage. Were Fury a free-to-play Steam game (and I have my problems with Steam) with loads of unlockable achievements, I'd be very curious to see how it would do today.

At any rate, these games, like small-scale subscription-driven MMOs, are fighting an uphill battle. Contrary to popular wisdom, I think it's much easier to justify a monthly subscription fee than to justify a $50-$60 retail box price that becomes instantly worthless when a game cancels. People understand paying for their continued enjoyment, what they don't understand is having a game they paid good money for effectively stolen from them - that's worse than spending money for a bad game because at least you still have the game. There's probably a thorny licensing issue having to do with breach of contract by publishers who cancel online-only games - even if it's somehow in the EULA, the ability to torpedo a game at any time after you buy it sounds like it has serious potential for fraud - but no court has explored this issue yet nor will until a publisher with deep pockets tempts fate.

So what can these PWS developers do to succeed? If the premise is sound (the jury's still out) and the games are fun (they are, at least in demo-sized doses), then it's all about reputation and quality - the incredibly expensive commitment to identifying and fixing what's wrong before the public sees it in beta. That's a given for any game, but especially important for a niche that has yet to prove itself. Vogster, Hi Res Studios, Realtime Worlds, and Ijji should pull out all the stops, support themselves with mobile games, iPhone apps, whatever, until they're sure they have something much more than just a polished E3 demo.

From there, I'd argue that decreasing the price point doesn't work; games are luxury goods and a discount, like the notion of free-to-play, leads to inferences about quality. The lone exception is Guild Wars, which has almost certainly become a financial bugbear on the long tail now that no new expansions are being released to support the game.

I'd propose a sort of reverse Guild Wars, where you pay nothing for the game, don't get a free trial, and instead pay for three months at once. $39.99 or so, that's about what you'd pay for a game anyway. Make it a non-recurring payment, like we do with our Ten Ton Hammer premium memberships, if you really want to try and build trust. Let folks buy an additional game at their local retailer to extend their subscription, rather than keeping a credit card on file, unless they actively want to pay you by CC.

Retailers would like it because they'd continue to move copies after the initial rush, distro costs would be partially offset by the billing support staff you don't need, and the gamers don't feel like they have Damocles' sword hanging over their head if they don't unsubscribe before the end of their billing month. The pressure to cancel subscriptions is one of the least understood forces in all of MMO gaming, yet it's killing games slowly left and right. The patch and expansion pipeline is already in place, getting players into the game more quickly after install, and if, heaven forbid, you have to cancel, you simply shutdown the pipeline and keep the servers running until the very last "subscription" elapses. Everyone gets exactly what they paid for.

Publishers would never go for the "non-recurring payment" thing, I'm guessing, but it's fun to dream. What sorts of things, price-oriented or otherwise, should PWS or newer MMO developers do to succeed? Have your say in the Loading... forum, or as usual, feel free to email me.


Shayalyn's Epic Thread of the Day


From our WoW: The Water Cooler Forum

MTV Movie Awards

What IS it about sparkly vampires, anyhow?

It's a Monday, and you've been quiet over the weekend (no doubt digesting all the E3 news),
so I thought I'd focus on a thread that kicked off last week and has
been chugging along in our WoW off-topic forum ever since. We're
talking about the MTV Movie Awards.

I
read the list of awarded movies that ArcaneBomb55 posted with a
perplexed look on my face, and one single thought running through my
head: Surely MTV can't be serious! (But they are serious, and they object to being called Shirley.) Best movie: Twilight? What is
the deal with the sparkly vampires? I confess I read a couple of the
books just to figure out what the fuss was about and...I don't get it.
The movie was slightly better than the books but only slightly.

At
any rate, our topic quickly wandered away from the blatantly
tween-centered commercialism of the MTV Movie Awards to the blatantly
artsy commercialism of the Academy Awards, which leads me to ponder
what makes a good movie. Have you seen some of MTV's award winners?
What about the latest Oscar winners? Seems to me the movies we often
consider classics never win award one, and yet it's likely
we'll forget Twilight's Bella and Edward long before we forget Jay and
Silent Bob.

Discuss movies here!

==============================
Awesome Quotes from the Epic Thread

"The
MTV awards are all about what's popular, not what's good, and what's
popular is too often what people are told they should like, while a lot
of cinematic gold slips under the radar.
"


- Stormbrjnger
==============================

Have you spotted an Epic Thread on our forums? Tell us!

5 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 48 in June! 685 in 2009!

New MMOG Articles At Ten Ton Hammer Today [Thanks Phil Comeau for links and Real World News]

  • Aion: Exclusive Preview Event Screenshots

    This weekend North American players were given their first glimpse into the lush world of Aion, the newest MMO from NCSoft, with the first of a proposed series of preview events leading up to the title’s launch later this year. Be sure to watch for our hands-on impressions of Aion later this week, but in the meantime we’ve put together a selection of exclusive screenshots from the event, featuring some of the exotic locals you might come across as you earn your wings as an Elyos, one of Aion’s two playable factions.
  • Champions Online: E3 Preview with Bill Roper

    One of the staples of the super hero genre, travel powers typically come in all shapes and sizes. From summoned objects that grant the ability to move at blazing fast speeds to bursting into flames and quite literally blazing your way across the four-color skies of your imagination, travel powers are nearly as synonymous with comic book heroes as is the concept of running through the city dressed in brightly colored spandex. These types of powers and more were discussed at E3 this week in a Champions Online preview with Bill Roper from Cryptic Studios, and Ten Ton Hammer was there to get all the juicy details!
  • Heroes of Telara: E3 2009 Demo

    The Ten Ton Hammer staff had the opportunity to sit down with a crew of developers from the Trion World Network, the developers behind the upcoming fantasy MMO Heroes of Telara. Coming into the demonstration with few expectations, Garrett Fuller came away surprised and intrigued by what he saw from the game.
  • geeked: The More-er You Know!

    Ten Ton Hammer's very own satirical webcomic on all things geek-related is back with a message for all you young studs out there looking for love. Pick your moments wisely, or wind up on ventilation like Bill. Be sure to catch up on any issues of Geeked you've missed by visiting our Comics Portal. Don't forget to rate your favorites while you're at it!
  • World of Warcraft: Ironmen No More?

    Patch 3.1.3 rolled in on Tuesday and to many Death Knights it beat them over the head with the dreaded nerf stick.  Many are crying foul and making sounds similar to the ones you got in Warcraft 3 when you beat the baby seals into submission.  The change was a dramatic drop in the armour granted from Frost Presence, from 80% down to 60%.  Was the nerf that bad? What did it really effect?  That’s what Byron “Messiah” Mudry looks into in his article entitled “Ironmen no more?”.



    Hot Content - Or, what I took a fancy to:
  1. Blizzcon Blitz 2009 Ticket Giveaway
  2. Global Agenda Hands-On Preview
  3. Star Wars: The Old Republic E3 2009 Trailer
  4. Final Fantasy XIV at E3 2009
  5. Jumpgate Evolution PvP Q&A Video with Scott Brown
  6. Crimecraft E3 2009 Trailer
  7. Heroes of Telara E3 Trailer
  8. Torchlight Destroyer Video
  9. EVE Online: Sins of a Solar Spymaster #13 - The Participation Game

Real World News


Thanks for visiting the Ten Ton Hammer network!

-Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle and the Ten Ton Hammer team


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Huxley Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

About The Author

Jeff joined the Ten Ton Hammer team in 2004 covering EverQuest II, and he's had his hands on just about every PC online and multiplayer game he could since.

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