MMORPGs death of RPG

[Thanee]

And Guild wars is coming out soon, the first MMORPG that does NOT have a monthly fee. We'll see what kind of impact that makes.

Almost none, most probably.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Thanee]

From what I understand, the intial buying price of the game goes into paying for the initial development costs. From there, the monthly fees go into server/bandwith, content upgrades, and user support.

I'm pretty sure that the initial price of the game will not cover the development as a whole. These games have development costs similar to Hollywood movies (don't have any actual numbers, just a guesstimate), if they are done in a high professional fashion, like Everquest or World of Warcraft.

Bye
Thanee

 

[tarchon]

And - like all computer games - MMORPGs do not offer the same "freedom" actual RPGs do.

It definitely helps having a GM who can gloss over or at least spice up the boring bits.

 

[Enforcer]

I know that I infected two other players and the DM in my group with the World of Warcraft bug, but besides silly WoW references during our pen and paper game it hasn't really affected us. And, although I REALLY like WoW, I vastly prefer to play D&D.

 

[Wormwood]

I love hearing how it's the DM's fault that his players would rather play video games than pen-and-paper.

Our game, which consisted of people I've known for over ten years, is irrevocably dissolved---because most of them would rather play MMORPGs.

(and before some of you blame the DM, we had a 'rotating GM/rotating game' system in place. So I guess we had three DM's who just plain sucked, right?)

Bottom line is, they prefer get the instant gratification of City of Heroes or World of Warcraft over the 'manual labor' inherent in tabletop role-playing. That's a direct quote from two of my friends who have abandoned tabletop play.

That's 6 people no longer buying RPG books, and I'm only tangentically involved in the hobby via this board.

Also, I bought my twelve-year old nephew the D&D Basic Set for Christmas, and I played with him and his friends for hours. They'd rather play GTA or FABLE.

Okay, let's get those heads back in those holes. I'm done.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

I'm pretty sure that the initial price of the game will not cover the development as a whole. These games have development costs similar to Hollywood movies (don't have any actual numbers, just a guesstimate), if they are done in a high professional fashion, like Everquest or World of Warcraft.

Well, in a brief googling, I didn't find any budget information, but I did find some estimated sales numbers. WoW is at over 1.5 million, Halo 2 at 4.2 million, and GTAIII at 11 million. Doing some brief guestimates puts me at about 15 million bucks recouped from WoW sales. Know the price range of a hollywood film to use as a comparison to a AAA title? If we can find a brief guestimate of scale (100k, millions, 10 millions, 100 millions) then we can see about how it's doing on the recoup side of things.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

I love hearing how it's the DM's fault that his players would rather play video games than pen-and-paper.

....

Bottom line is, they prefer get the instant gratification of City of Heroes or World of Warcraft over the 'manual labor' inherent in tabletop role-playing. That's a direct quote from two of my friends who have abandoned tabletop play.

....

Also, I bought my twelve-year old nephew the D&D Basic Set for Christmas, and I played with him and his friends for hours. They'd rather play GTA or FABLE.

Okay, let's get those heads back in those holes. I'm done.

True, but don't feel too bad. See, with DMing, it's just you, in whatever time you have. In video games, they've got teams of people working around the clock to make sure that the game is as fun as possible. It's hard to compete with that.

 

[the Jester]

Well, we lost a player to Counterstrike, but it was for the best for everyone.

That's the closest I have come.

 

[Thanee]

Well, in a brief googling, I didn't find any budget information, but I did find some estimated sales numbers. WoW is at over 1.5 million, Halo 2 at 4.2 million, and GTAIII at 11 million. Doing some brief guestimates puts me at about 15 million bucks recouped from WoW sales. Know the price range of a hollywood film to use as a comparison to a AAA title? If we can find a brief guestimate of scale (100k, millions, 10 millions, 100 millions) then we can see about how it's doing on the recoup side of things.

Only numbers I remember are from Half-Life 2; read an interview with the head guy from Valve once, which only mentioned a number somewhere in the middle of the development process (I think it was 20 million dollars at that point, something along the lines of "we've had already spent 20 million dollars and were not even close to being done"), but from there one could estimate the final cost at 30+ million dollars (a lot of that was also development of special tools for the creation of the game, which will have future use and are not exclusively for that project).

And I'd guess, that WoW development did cost even more than that.

If you want a wild guess, I'd put it at 50+ million dollars in development cost.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Thanee]

I love hearing how it's the DM's fault that his players would rather play video games than pen-and-paper.

While I think, that a very good DM is generally able to make the game more interesting for the players, a very large portion of this (moving to video games) comes from the player's side. It's more the interests of the player than the ability of the DM, IMHO.

Bye
Thanee