All of us got so excited about Sony Station going live that we somehow missed EA's attempt to sell Ultima Online items for real US$. I say "attempt" because Stratics has details on their emergency publish to roll back all of the items. Apparently there was a dupe bug, which is unfortunate when you had players paying $2.99 for each item (or $12.99 for all 6). Sounds like they're going to try again once they debug their problems. While this isn't traditional real-world transactions, selling upgraded and special items seems to be inline with the approach that would fit other EA games, like Madden, with online components.
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Jul 12, 2005
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You probably missed it because that is how irrelivent UO has become. I have to admire EA though, for a company to be so completely inept in designing and supporting MMOGs, they certainly have pushed the limits when it comes to capitalizing on MMOGs.
Posted by: Galrahn | Jul 12, 2005 at 14:05
And yet, we still have more subs than most of the MMOs out there. That's got to chap some asses, by gosh.
Posted by: Tim Keating | Jul 12, 2005 at 14:40
Tim Keating wrote:
And yet, we still have more subs than most of the MMOs out there. That's got to chap some asses, by gosh.
Hah, right on!
--matt
Posted by: Matt Mihaly | Jul 12, 2005 at 14:54
LOL, well said, Tim. I do wish EA was still reporting the subscriber numbers in their SEC reports, though.
UO is relevant for longevity, if nothing else. Its 8 year anniversary is in a couple months and it still makes significant money. That should give people pause and make them take another look at the game, for the reasons why.
Posted by: Jessica Mulligan | Jul 12, 2005 at 15:29
Jessica, I know MMOGCHART isn't accurate source, but they list 150kish. How close would you guess that is to being right?
==Aaron
Posted by: Aaron | Jul 12, 2005 at 16:38
I wouldn't trust EA to wipe their own bottoms, much less report accurate numbers to the public. Lest we forgot the whole 50% turnover rate? the "EA_spouse" scandal or perhaps "Earth & Beyond" which faded into nothingness? I swore I would never play another EA game as long as I lived and so far I've kept to it, there's been no reason not to (not liking sports games happens to be a rather good attribute).
Posted by: Lee Delarm | Jul 12, 2005 at 18:56
Lest we forgot the whole 50% turnover rate? the "EA_spouse" scandal
While that's reprehensible of course, I wish people would stop thinking EA alone is guilty of these sorts of things. It's an industry-wide problem, not something unique to EA.
Furthermore, you'll be sorry for your boycott in Fall 06 you know :P
Anyhow hearing EA jumping on a bandwagon to make more money doesn't seem all that shocking. Having to roll it back quickly afterwards is no surprise either (they're yo-yoing the BF2 patch right now). I guess we now have to take for granted that integrated microtransactions for loot will be a permanent fact of life in MMOs, with both SOE and EA behind it. Has Bartle ever written on this? I wonder what his thoughts are on this newly-officialized economy in MMOs means.
Posted by: James | Jul 12, 2005 at 21:28
Despite the "UO is dying" thread posted on Terra Nova a few months back - Ultima Online is still extremely healthy. If you doubt that - log onto one of the major banks in prime time and try to get a word in edgewise. The UO staff actually does a great job in responding to the desires of the community and communicating issues such as this latest bug. There is a new UO expansion on the horizon as well (http://www.uo.com/uoml.html) - with new character classes and land masses added. Most importantly, the UO staff avoid the thuggish approach to customer service that many other MMORPG companies seem to employ. IMHO, EA and the UO staff need to be applauded. Loudly.
Posted by: Bob Kiblinger | Jul 12, 2005 at 21:36
EA can't make MMOs. They have had one MMO that's been successful, and that one is UO. It was made and succeeded despite EA, not because of them.
Word on the street is that UO is losing over 1000 subs a week and is down to 130K players. THe team has lost it's producer, the lead designer, two other designers, all its world builders, most of its artists, and most of its programmers since the last expansion. Most have left EA or have been transferred to other games.
UO will be around for as long as it makes a good profit, and not a day longer.
Posted by: Anonymous Coward | Jul 12, 2005 at 22:48
UO is a neglected cash cow for EA. The top brass will milk the cow with little oversight, and the remaining employee will get a bit of autonomy to maintain the community. Well, except perhaps for the command to monetize virtual items.
The recent situation is probably only due to the lack of QA resources they have. So, IMO, this situation does not deserve the HATE noted here.
On another news, M:tG Online is ending the physical card(gold) standard. No longer will the cards you buy online to play is backed by physical cards anymore.
Ah, more monetization of virtual loot.
Frank
Posted by: magicback | Jul 13, 2005 at 01:13
Aaron: No way for me to guess at current subscriptions. I know, from inside info, that about 18 months ago they were at about 180k. Today? I'm just not sure. I have no access to the sales, billing and churn data.
Anon. Coward: The 'word on the street' about UO is that it has been 'dying' for 6 years. I can't count the number of times its demise has been announced. Somehow, it survives. Even if they are down to 130k subs - and I remember one of those self-same 'street persons' telling me the subs were down to 100k based on shard use, at a time when I worked on UO and new the subs were at 220k and that 80% of them were active in any given week - that is still a $20 million+ annual revenue stream and still makes them, what, the 5th or 6th largest MMO in the US? Don't let your anger with EA blind you to the reality of the situation. UO will close some day; I just don't thik that day is relatively near, unless EA decides to close down a huge moneymaker. THAT wouldn't surprise me, either.
On your other point: Yeah, I agree with you there. EA has never figured out how to make an MMO and they still just plain suck at it. They got lucky with UO; a motivated team working with a world-class franchise, many of which had actually played MUDs and MMOs before and knew, more or less, what features the players would pay for.
Given EA's resources, that's kind of sad.
Posted by: Jessica Mulligan | Jul 13, 2005 at 03:19
EA has a boxed-game mindset which continues to serve them well. I worked on three MMOGs for EA, and from top to bottom, from their execs to their accounting procedures to their development processes, they're oriented toward fire-and-forget box games. There have been some cases that I've seen where there was a profound (and at times intransigent) lack of understanding of the differences between single-user box products and the product-service combination of MMOGs.
EA has many strengths. Developing and deploying successful MMOGs isn't one of them. In that light, UO is an anomaly. Frankly, I'm surprised it's lasted this long after the big contraction of all the studios to Redwood Shores.
Getting back to the topic here, sorta, it doesn't surprise me a bit the EA would flirt with RMTs of corporate origin. I'd hope the unremarkable nature of this is indicative of the maturation of the market (as with product placement and in-game advertising). I think though that their quick backpedaling due to technical issues highlights the overall directional and technical issues in the game.
Posted by: Mike Sellers | Jul 13, 2005 at 10:07
Given the way UO is played, you know they had to of made $25,000 or more from this service while they had it, the vast majority of players in UO today are rares collectors and such.
Even if only 2600 people, which is less than 5% of their North American population bought 1 full set of 6 evil items, that would be $25,000. Hell there are probably 100 or more sites for UO that exclusively sell UO rares, and assuming they only bought 1 set that would be over $1,000 right there.
EA actually does this RMT thing better than Sony, what other company besides EA sells virtual bitmap quality crap in a 2d interface for money and is so successful they repeat the process again and again and again every few months?
Too bad the whole 'duping' episode reminds me exactly why I got tired of that silly game, they haven't implimented anything into that game without enormous bugs, something several newer MMO gaming companies actually have great track records of these days due to modern, more stable code.
BTW Tim, MMOGChart points out that UO no longer has 100K North American subscribers, and unless you think the introduction of the elf is going to kick start growth in the UO population, there isn't a lot of potential for growth. :(
I will say this though, EA is a in unique place in the MMOG sphere. If EA hired a respectable manager, gifted developers, and put their marketing resources in action, UO2 is about the only game I can think of that could actually have WoW type of impact and expectations at release, because brand names like EA and Ultima carry the same if not more weight on gamers as Blizzard and Warcraft did, and when it comes down to it, UO still did things (house ownership and incredible customization for example) that no other MMO fantasy game has been able to duplicate.
Posted by: Galrahn | Jul 13, 2005 at 10:27
Galrahn> brand names like EA and Ultima carry the same if not more weight on gamers as Blizzard and Warcraft did
EA? Possibly.
Ultima? I'm not so sure about that. My impression is that most MMOG players today don't even know there were originally Ultima computer games. "Garriott who?"
Blizzard stayed in the consciousness of gamers because they occasionally released new versions of Warcraft. I don't have the sense that Ultima retains anything like that degree of mind share.
If that's correct, it suggests that a UO2 couldn't count on the same kind of loyalty/buzz that Blizzard had for WoW. If a UO2 were to succeed, it would have to do so largely on its own merits.
Which doesn't seem like a bad thing.
Galrahn> UO2 is about the only game I can think of that could actually have WoW type of impact and expectations at release
I'd suggest that MMOGs based on Middle-Earth, Star Trek, and Harry Potter could potentially generate WoW-sized numbers at launch. (Whether they could retain those numbers is a different question.)
--Flatfingers
Posted by: Bart Stewart | Jul 13, 2005 at 12:37
what other company besides EA sells virtual bitmap quality crap in a 2d interface for money and is so successful they repeat the process again and again and again every few months?
Habbo Hotel?
Posted by: Raph | Jul 13, 2005 at 13:11
IMO -- and I'm admittedly biased (or at least, I was) -- EA has hired talented developers in the past, and probably will again. The trouble is that EA doesn't know how to treat talent, and so anyone they've had on the team who could have saved UO has been driven away by EA management's short-sighted practices. When management says things like, "We're moving away from the Game Designer model" in all seriousness, you can't expect anyone with any talent to stick around for long. They haven't lost everyone yet, but I don't think the talented people left on the team are enough to save UO from the crushing weight of EA management, much less start another UO2 project (this would be the fourth or fifth try, depending on what you count) and launch it (something none of the previous UO2 projects have done) to any sort of acclaim, much less WoW-sized acclaim.
Posted by: Samantha LeCraft | Jul 13, 2005 at 13:33
Sigh; the continuing monetization of virtual goods in massive online games just makes them look more unattractive by the minute...to a player. Sadly, it makes a lot of sense from a business standpoint.
So at what point would design decisions for increasing RM mirco-transactions become more important that design decisions that keep people subscribed and paying their monthly fee?
I can easily envision a never ending cycle of:
1. Sell "best" sword in game directly to players for $2
2. After sales level off, nerf that sword to uselessness or put in new content impervious to said sword
3. Start selling new "best" sword in game directly to players for $2
Is that even ethical?
It's either that or make convienence factor now have a cost, like say charging 50 cents of RM for each griffon ride in WoW. There is some price point where most players would eat the fee just so they wouldn't have to run for 30 minutes to hook up with their friends.
I hate being nickel and dimed to death. And while I can certainly choose not to engage in any of these transactions, it just strikes me as leading towards really unfun designs.
Xilren
Posted by: Xilren | Jul 13, 2005 at 13:34
Xilren wrote:
Sigh; the continuing monetization of virtual goods in massive online games just makes them look more unattractive by the minute...to a player.
It makes them more unattractive to a player and more attractive to another player. Don't assume your personal preferences are the preferences of the market. The fact that people are spending so much on virtual goods tells me that a good chunk of players absolutely wants it.
--matt
Posted by: Matt Mihaly | Jul 13, 2005 at 14:23
Matt>The fact that people are spending so much on virtual goods tells me that a good chunk of players absolutely wants it.
Not to rehash, but there's a big difference between players *wanting* RMT and players *using* RMT to bypass what they see as an even greater *evil*.
In my own very anecdotal research (interviews) over the last four or so years, absolutely no one ever told me they actually *like* or *want* RMT. Those who tolerate them tend to view RMT as the only way to get past what they see as unreasonable obstacles designed into the game intentionally to slow *most* of the player base down enough to keep them paying subs until more 'content' is available.
--Aaron
Posted by: Aaron | Jul 13, 2005 at 15:10
Sorry to double up, but I had a question for the designers:
If EA and SOE continue to develop these markets, will it put significantly more pressure on designers of their worlds to come up with newer and newer content at an increasingly unrealistic pace?
I mean, it seems reasonable that if players are able to *buy* their way past parts of the game they don't want to play that they will absolutely plow through the stuff they do like and then demand more.
Also, to the programmers and producers: I wonder how much effort and money will have to be expended on a fairly regular basis to overcome glitches like the one UO experienced?
--Aaron
Posted by: Aaron | Jul 13, 2005 at 18:03
Yeah, after all Lineage has like, no players..
Posted by: Thabor | Jul 13, 2005 at 19:21
/sarcasm
Posted by: Thabor | Jul 13, 2005 at 19:23
Thabor, what does Lineage have to do with the fact that there hasn't been an Ultima computer game released recently enough to keep that franchise hot the way Blizzard kept stoking the Warcraft fire?
I still see no reason to think that a UO2 would enjoy the same kind of high initial subscription rate due to the Ultima computer games that WoW got from the Warcraft computer games. I think too much time has passed for Ultima.
Do you disagree with that?
--Bart
Posted by: Bart Stewart | Jul 14, 2005 at 00:52
Aaron wrote:
Not to rehash, but there's a big difference between players *wanting* RMT and players *using* RMT to bypass what they see as an even greater *evil*.
In my own very anecdotal research (interviews) over the last four or so years, absolutely no one ever told me they actually *like* or *want* RMT. Those who tolerate them tend to view RMT as the only way to get past what they see as unreasonable obstacles designed into the game intentionally to slow *most* of the player base down enough to keep them paying subs until more 'content' is available.
I appreciate that your informal surveys have shown that, but on the other hand, for the last 8 years, I've run a company whose business is built on RMT, and I have had plenty of opportunity to hear from players who like RMT (as well as those who don't, of course).
Saying that people participating in a frivolous entertainment activity don't like it and are doing it because they feel like they have to in order to bypass something else is, to me, like claiming people don't actually like cars: They're just driving them because the design of physical reality has put inconvenient distances between themselves and where they want to go.
--matt
Posted by: Matt Mihaly | Jul 14, 2005 at 02:11
Thabor: Yeah, after all Lineage has like, no players..
---
You're confusing your timelines. Richard Garriott had nothing to do with the original Lineage launch, which happened in Korea long before his second company was bought out by NCSoft. Lineage was the #1 game in Asia before that happened, as a matter of fact.
And even with Richard's Lord British name behind the US launch, it failed miserably in this country.
Posted by: Jessica Mulligan | Jul 14, 2005 at 09:06
I think the most redeeming thing about Lineage II was the fact you could specify in the 'sell' packet not only the item guid and qty you were selling to NPC's, but the type of item you were selling. :) And the server believed the client, OMG. Alas, it took them, what, 3 weeks to prevent people from a selling 1 gp arrows back to the merchant for 17 million gp a pop? I guess they figured that if the game wasn't showing problems in the Korean market (they were several chronicles ahead) then an American certainly couldn't find fault with their code. :/
Posted by: Mithra | Jul 14, 2005 at 09:53
Matt>Saying that people participating in a frivolous entertainment activity don't like it and are doing it because they feel like they have to in order to bypass something else is, to me, like claiming people don't actually like cars: They're just driving them because the design of physical reality has put inconvenient distances between themselves and where they want to go.
Well, whatever you think of the rationale, I was just reporting my observations as a journalist. I'm not claiming that sentiment is universal. For example, none of the people whose sentiments I was referring to were players of text worlds. As for the analogy, maybe if our physical world were actually designed by entrepeneurs and we paid them subscription fees to exist, I'd see your point better.
--Aaron
Posted by: Aaron | Jul 14, 2005 at 10:08
Matt>Saying that people participating in a frivolous entertainment activity don't like it and are doing it because they feel like they have to in order to bypass something else is, to me, like claiming people don't actually like cars: They're just driving them because the design of physical reality has put inconvenient distances between themselves and where they want to go.
I don't think that's what is being said at all. People are paying for something they, in theory, already have access to, just not as fast as they want it. Therefore, they are paying to skip to dessert, because the meal is simply too many courses to really enjoy...
Posted by: Artheos | Jul 14, 2005 at 11:04
What about the people who sell? I personally can tell you right now I enjoy RMT, because I enjoy the ability to play a game and earn money from it at the same time. It's like a dream come true, able to enjoy something and get money from it too. It's like having great job satisfaction almost :)
Posted by: Lee Delarm | Jul 14, 2005 at 12:14
Jessica,
I am aware of that.
Bart,
I think it shows a distinct lack of knowledge about the MMOG core audience to suggest they aren't aware of Ultima.
Garriott's name is still out there in the American sphere at least, and tied to one of the major MMOG publishers. I also think its rather condescending to suggest the MMOG audience has so little knowledge of the industry that they wouldn't even recognize the name. Although I suppose it is probable that his handle "Lord British" carries more recognition than his real name.
I would agree that UO2 wouldn't enjoy any draw due to the original Ultima games, however I wouldn't agree as to the reason. While the Ultima games were mostly definately landmarks, I don't feel they really enjoyed that broad an appeal. Most gamers from my generation have played at least one or two of them, but very few played even half of them.
In addition to that, without Garriott tied to it, it is only Ultima in name. Legally EA my own the property, but from a pratical standpoint they will look just like any other big company trying to develop an MMO off a property licensed from someone else. It doesn't have the sense of integrity, investment, or history that an original product does.
To me at least its similar to the difference between something handcrafted and something mass produced. A long time ago EA put out games they felt like they had that sort of investment in what they published. Now they only have a good reputation in areas like sports, which don't require the same sort of involvement as crafting a world.
Posted by: Thabor | Jul 14, 2005 at 13:55
Thabor> I think it shows a distinct lack of knowledge about the MMOG core audience to suggest they aren't aware of Ultima.
I could be wrong. If there's some objective evidence that a reasonable proportion of current MMOG players played any of the Ultima games, or know that such games ever existed, or even recognize Richard Garriott's name, I'll retract my assertion and thank you for helping me improve my understanding.
Until then, I have no reason to think that my perception of the MMOG core audience isn't valid. And my perception is that for most of today MMOG players, all of world history began roughly 8-10 years ago -- everything else is a kind of hazy mythology.
> I also think its rather condescending to suggest the MMOG audience has so little knowledge of the industry that they wouldn't even recognize the name.
No condescension was intended, but certainly I'm disappointed at what I think is the low level of knowledge of history (of games or anything else) prevalent today. Why is that objectionable?
Did you feel I was taking a shot at Garriott? That's exactly the opposite of my intention! I wish more people knew about what he's accomplished; my disappointment is that so few seem to, any more than they recognize his father's name and accomplishments.
> I would agree that UO2 wouldn't enjoy any draw due to the original Ultima games, however I wouldn't agree as to the reason.
Fair enough. They seemed pretty big to me at the time, but then I thought I was king of the world when I upgraded my Radio Shack Color Computer from 16K to 64K, so it's possible that I'm just easily impressed. *g*
> from a pratical standpoint they [EA] will look just like any other big company trying to develop an MMO off a property licensed from someone else. It doesn't have the sense of integrity, investment, or history that an original product does.
I agree. Heck, it can hard enough when you do own the original property. (The Sims Online being a recent example.)
Still, even licensing might work if you have a hit computer game or someone else has a hit movie based on that property. It won't guarantee the success of a MMOG based on that game (or movie), but your chances of having a hit MMOG seem to drop dramatically without at least one such popular mass-market product in recent memory.
If I think that's the real reason why Blizzard put out a Warcraft 3, am I being overly cynical? Or was that just an obvious marketing strategy?
--Bart
Posted by: Bart Stewart | Jul 14, 2005 at 15:09
Fair enough, I don't have hard numbers to hand either. My recollection of various demographics over the past decade or so typically places the core market very close to my age group, and keeps getting older right along with me. Thats bound to change as the newer generation gets old enough to buy their own games, but for now my perception is that the largest part of the market for MMOs are people who grew up with Ultima, Bard's Tale, Might and Magic, Zork, the SSI games and others.
I did. It seems that I was mistaken, my apologies.
I have no idea what really happened there. I think the design for Warcraft after two lead more naturally to WoW than to Warcraft 3. They'd already been leaning toward developing an RPG / Strategy. I'm sure it was at least as much that they didn't want to throw away what they'd already spent on developing the RTS as to keep their name out.
I frequently wonder how they would have fared differently releasing a Starcraft MMOG instead.
Posted by: Thabor | Jul 14, 2005 at 16:09
Warcraft 3 was originally going to be much more RPG than RTS, but they shifted gears midstream and put more emphasis on the RTS portion than originally planned.
I don't think that Warcraft 3 was put out to promote WoW at all. Keep in mind that Blizzard takes MUCH longer than most companies seem to to produce a game (and never on time)...
Posted by: Artheos | Jul 15, 2005 at 07:01
Just thought I'd offer my perspective on how aware MMOG players are of the earlier Ultimas, as someone who worked on the single-player Ultima games for 5 years, and also as somebody who runs a fair-sized unrelated MMOG now.
When our players ask me about what other games I've worked on before Furcadia, I generally mention Ultima, as it's by far the best known and best selling title that I worked on. Fairly often they'll ask "Oh, did you work on Ultima Online?" Not only is it the most recently released Ultima title, but it seems like in many cases it's the only one they'd ever heard of, and they didn't know there were earlier Ultima games.
I should note, though, that this impression is likely skewed by a couple things about the Furcadia player base in particular. First, they're fairly young (I think our last survey showed about 80% fell in the 12-24 age range). Second, it's not an audience as heavily skewed towards hard-core gamers as you'd find on games like Everquest, DAoC, etc. Our audience comes more from the casual gamers and chatters, and probably matches the general public's level of awareness of different game titles more than that of the hardcore gamer. (Our survey also showed, for instance, that about 57% of our players are female - a proportion I think the hardcore gaming audience is still quite a ways from acheiving.) Amongst the hardcore gamers I'd expect awareness of single-player Ultima titles would still be a lot higher.
-- Dr. Cat
Posted by: Dr. Cat | Jul 24, 2005 at 15:29