The MMO Crash of 2008

[GameBanshee News]

The guys over at HellForge have published an editorial called "The MMO Crash of 2008", in which they look at some of the bad decisions that eventually contributed to the failure of Hellgate: London, Tabula Rasa, Pirates of the Burning Sea, and others.

To start it all off was Hellgate: London. I can talk for ages about this game, listing the many faults found within it, and I still wouldn't cover all the troubles to it. Here's a game where you can effectively use in a conversation for the epitome to the definition of "everything went wrong." No one could have ever predicted that this game was going to bomb on the scale that it did. You had ex-Blizzard guys (some of which were the creative and original minds behind Diablo) getting together to make a game of their genre. But something went wrong. Maybe it was their CEO "following his heart" when it came to juggling with people's jobs or maybe it was the ridiculous advertising campaign in Korea, or maybe it was just not listening to your beta testers, but I'm willing to bet it was most likely a combination of all of the above. It's pretty bad when a term known as "flagshipping" is coined out of the endeavors you have taken.

Essentially, Flagship Studios bit off more than they could chew. A few weeks before Hellgate launched, the original staff working on the game was immediately moved over to Mythos, another project that never got to see the day of light. This mainly had to do in part with how Flagship Studios was in the hole shortly after Hellgate launched and flopped, since there was zero incentive to actually subscribe to nonexistant content, and decided to take out a loan to keep the boat afloat for some borrowed time, putting up the intellectual property rights of Hellgate and Mythos as collateral. Eventually they defaulted on the loan and the company went out of business in August 2008. Out of professional courtesy, Namco is holding up the online servers until February 1, 2009, after which the game will indefinitely be dead (HanbitSoft bought the rights to both games but Namco refuses to hand over the American distribution rights for Hellgate).

[Xandax]

The ones of those I played (AoC, PotBS and TR), it was clear pretty fast (beta for Pirates and AoC, and a month into retail for TR) that they wouldn't make it big.

Broken content, lack of content, introducing of elements which had nothing to do in the games etc.

I hope 2008 will be a warning to MMO companies that they can't just release half-finished games, buggy games, or ignore the beta-crowds advice and then expect to ride the World of Warcraft-wave and milk customers for money.

The larger MMO market is both a boon and a threat. If you do not deliver, customers are much less loyal now then they were a few years ago.

The mantra "no MMO is finished from launch" needs to die. Sure no MMO will logically ever be finished, but alas, releasing half the content, buggy content, unstable servers and all that. It is a thing of the 90s. Now - you'll loose subscribers. The first 3+ months of retail is not a beta. People are paying for it.

[Fiberfar]

Hmmm... Well I found the single player aspect of Hellgate:London to be entertaining enough (somehow, blasting everything with big guns or powers never got old).