Alt1 Games shutting down Troy Online

@Fabius Bile You're right. One FTP game closing down means that the other 100s of FTP titles to choose from suddenly went *POOF*!

Beau

@Beau Hindman

That and how major F2P companies are laying people off...and how in the past 12 months more F2P games have closed then released.....

@J45neoboy

Need more fact-linkage.

@Fabius Bile

It's less an indicator of quality than a natural process - there are simply too many mmogs out there, of all sub stypes, and some of the smaller ones can't survive.

@NeverDeath

I think this is pretty normal. There are a lot of crap console games. There are a lot of crap novels. The fact that mmo took more effort and time doesn't mean that the genre should be exempted from the natural course of things.

Furthermore, the more fail invest means more data and examples to company and investors on what not to do. So it really depends on how you see things.

@NeverDeath

From the looks of things, shitty titles are dying now, so hopefully this means that the trend with everyone to their dog trying to get into the MMO business is finally over. I imagine by next year a lot of titles will be closing shop when AAA quality MMOs launch.

-

I always found it odd when people espouse the virtue of more choices but when those choices suck I'd rather just have 3-4 quality MMO titles to choose from.

@Seldra

That's basically exactly how I feel. I don't see the point in titles with absolutely nothing unique or interesting to offer even bothering with all the resources it costs to break into the MMO market. Just spend the money on some normal RPG/FPS/RTS/TBS/Fighting/Sports/Puzzle titles like everyone else, then when you make enough money to afford making an MMO, you'll also have more experience and more consideration for the success of the game when your own money is on the line. These people get published, and it's usually not the finances of the studio itself that are wasted. It just seems pointless, doesn't it? Like Thermopylae - good effort, but you never stood a chance, sorry. You still lost!

Fortunately in the game development arena, you don't have to go against Persia, you only have to beat yourself; By having more positives than negatives and building on your strengths, trying to dull out and polish away your weaknesses. With some of the AAA titles on their way soon, I suspect we'll see more of these "crappy X-brand generic MMO dies today" bulletins - but the truth is that most of those AAA titles will probably fail, too. Warhammer and AoC (two great examples of games I could have fixed single-handedly if put in charge back before they sunk) are pretty much the poster boys of wasted potential, and they, along with a few other AAA titles since, have demonstrated the primary problem with MMO developers in general: They don't pay attention to their player base, and they don't spend enough time A: communicating with it, and B: playing their own game, weighing numbers.

I'm sorry but when a Bright Wizard does more AoE than ST damage, or when stacking buffs eradicate drawbacks meant to balance a class, who can really make the defense that devs DO pay proper attention? A toddler could do better, in most cases. At least, I could have, when I was a toddler.

@Seldra

That's basically exactly how I feel. I don't see the point in titles with absolutely nothing unique or interesting to offer even bothering with all the resources it costs to break into the MMO market. Just spend the money on some normal RPG/FPS/RTS/TBS/Fighting/Sports/Puzzle titles like everyone else, then when you make enough money to afford making an MMO, you'll also have more experience and more consideration for the success of the game when your own money is on the line. These people get published, and it's usually not the finances of the studio itself that are wasted. It just seems pointless, doesn't it? Like Thermopylae - good effort, but you never stood a chance, sorry. You still lost!

Fortunately in the game development arena, you don't have to go against Persia, you only have to beat yourself; By having more positives than negatives and building on your strengths, trying to dull out and polish away your weaknesses. With some of the AAA titles on their way soon, I suspect we'll see more of these "crappy X-brand generic MMO dies today" bulletins - but the truth is that most of those AAA titles will probably fail, too. Warhammer and AoC (two great examples of games I could have fixed single-handedly if put in charge back before they sunk) are pretty much the poster boys of wasted potential, and they, along with a few other AAA titles since, have demonstrated the primary problem with MMO developers in general: They don't pay attention to their player base, and they don't spend enough time A: communicating with it, and B: playing their own game, weighing numbers.

I'm sorry but when a Bright Wizard does more AoE than ST damage, or when stacking buffs eradicate drawbacks meant to balance a class, who can really make the defense that devs DO pay proper attention? A toddler could do better, in most cases. At least, I could have, when I was a toddler.

@NeverDeath

Sorry for double post, shitty site server ftl. Guess that's what happens when after 5 minutes of nothing I get bored and click 'Submit' again.

@NeverDeath

Since when did the games industry have professionals in it?

Agree though, too many companies are on the "me too" bandwagon at the moment, across all genres of games.