Since I will be out of town during New Years, I’m going to post my insignificant predictions right now. If you haven’t read my predictions for 2008, then go take a gander and have a good laugh….then come back here and have another laugh 
1. Warhammer will continue to have it’s audience shrunk. This will not be a bad thing because they will also find themselves and start really coming into their own as an RvR (…not PvE…) alternative to WoW. They will fall into the same issues as Planetside does for new players.
2. Age of Conan will continue to struggle and will fold this year…or will show some serious signs of folding within 2 years.
3. Blizzard will stay the course and will do nothing to rock its boat. I know…this is kind of a gimmie, but I need at least one of these
4. One more MMO luminary will fall on his sword.
5. LOTRO will become what people thought WAR would be, i.e. the second coming of Jesus.
6. Star Gate Worlds will not see the light of day and will be canceled this year.
7. Gotta restate this from my previous prediction: Jumpgate Evolution will be the sleeper hit of 2009.
8. RMT will not be something that the MMO industry can hang its hat on as a reliable revenue stream for 2009. This won’t be because RMT is a bad thing, it will be because most people will not have the disposable income to spend due to the continuing economic crisis, which will get worse. Subscription based games will still be king of the hill due to their inherent “lock-in” nature.
9. Free Realms and Wizard 101 will go head to head in a clash of the titans battle never before seen in the history of man kind….and we will all be very happy that they did.
10. I will try an Anime based MMO and I will die a little inside for doing so.
11. Star Trek Online’s future will directly depend on the outcome of the new movie. If the new movie flops, so will this game. If the movie succeeds then MMO gamers and Trekkies alike will cry out with joy.
12. TOR will continue to make headlines and will announce its release date in 2009….which, as it happens, will be Q4 2009.
Winners for 2009: LOTRO, WoW, TOR, Jumpgate, Kids MMOs
Losers for 2009: AoC, Star Gate Worlds, RMT, STO
D out.
Entries (RSS)
December 29th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
“1. Warhammer will continue to have it’s audience shrunk. This will not be a bad thing because they will also find themselves and start really coming into their own as an RvR (…not PvE…) alternative to WoW. They will fall into the same issues as Planetside does for new players.”
At first I thought the same thing.
However now I feel that Mythic has a slight chance to pull an Eve online out of their ass.
If they continue fixing things, polishing things, making the game better and better. More refined and polished and fun.
Word of mouth will spread over the course of months and months, people may return to give it another try.
Your dead on though that it has to be all about RvR.
If Mythic continues to try and make PvE any sort of significant part of Warhammer online, they are sinking their own damn boat.
“11. Star Trek Online’s future will directly depend on the outcome of the new movie. If the new movie flops, so will this game. If the movie succeeds then MMO gamers and Trekkies alike will cry out with joy.”
I gotta disagree on this one. Star Trek online will fail. Last I heard it was in a laughable state with ‘Phaser 20 rats’ sort of thing all over the place. If any franchise that goes MMO needs to be re-imagined from your standard MMO, it’s Star Trek Online.
As for your fail predictions, Stargate, Age of Conan, your totally right. They are destined to die.
December 29th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
I thought Free Realms was more like Metaplace than Wizard 101.
December 29th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Pretty good with 1-3 last year. I didn’t laugh until 4 and I laughed hard when I read it.
As for this year’s prediction you didn’t say anything about Darkfall :p
December 30th, 2008 at 9:00 am
#2. Funcom showed incredible resilience with the notoriously “worst in history” bad launch of Anarchy Online and kept it going to become one of the longer running MMORPGs. Age of Conan will likely stick around too, but in a sense it will die in the same way that most of us count it as dead already, it doesn’t have a future as a mainstream title. The worst result of Funcom’s second failure is that it doesn’t bode well for Secret World, because no matter how promising that game may be, I doubt they can even count on the support of the Dreamworld fans.
#5. I really agree with this, LOTRO has turned out to be the hidden gem. In the wake of letdowns from 2008, the “pretty good” game from 2007 has quietly improved and is poised to be a sleeper hit. Rock solid where everyone else has holes in their fabric.
#10. I will not be caving in to an Anime MMO. I almost would have, but now I’m going to be too busy playing LOTRO.
#12. If BioWare, LucasArts and EA are smart (1 out of 3 is probably bad), they’ll push TOR to 2010 and fill it to the brim with the amount of content and polish that everyone expected from other games but failed to deliver. Plus they would be wise to wait for the economy to get into serious upswing. Unfortunately, I think you’re correct, because EA is going to be more looking at an ever increasing budget and worried about their bottom line.
And on that note, that’s my big prediction, that if TOR releases in 2009, it will underperform. Probably not as bad as AoC, but like WAR it will be filed in the overall “not a blockbuster like we hoped” category.
December 30th, 2008 at 9:54 am
1. Agree
2. Disagree, AOC (given FunCom’s history) could hang on for quite awhile but we don’t know the arrangement with the Conan license and that could impact their ability to keep it running (ie we don’t know how much they are required to pay the IP owner overtime (if anything)).
3. Agree. Blizzard will not do anything crazy with WOW even if this is just to give SC2 some breathing room.
4. You have to be more specific than that. This is like saying their will be a major earthquake somewhere in the world in 2009.
5. Sorry but LotRO will become EQ2. It will become that game that everyone says is the most solid and polished MMORPG around with all these great features but for some reason not that many people will play it regardless. It will hold its numbers and make Turbine a nice steady income but that is all.
6. Hell this thing may get canceled in 2008 as we still have 2 days to go and its employees have not been paid in over a month.
7. I think you are right on the money here.
8. I think actually the opposite is true. RMT has the possibility to allow people to spend less on their games in many cases. In hard economic times people tend to cut down on ‘extras’ and a $15.00 a month hit to your bank account can look very tempting. Younger gamers are even more susceptible to this as it is the parents who are paying the sub. Games that have the ability to play for free with RMT work on the model that only a very small percentage actually buy items and of that percentage they really bank on the ultra hardcore that spend a lot. Now if you could produce a triple A quality game capable of pulling people away from a sub game this dynamic could change. You could see the percentage of players who purchase items increase as these new players are used to paying $15.00 a month. But remember they are trying to save money so they only spend $5.00 a month. Your RMT game is doing well and the players feel they are saving money and still get to play a game. Once again this impacts the younger players as mom and dad are more likely to say “sorry but I can’t afford $15.00 a month, but here’s $5.00”.
9. Free Realms could be the game I’m talking about in #8. I think it will smoke Wizard 101if SOE puts their marketing team in high gear.
10. Yes, yes you will and big chested, catear girls without noses will haunt your dreams till the end of days.
11. Regardless I think this game is screwed. People can say what they want about Cryptic but I’ve never felt they are that great of a development team. COH had an interesting concept that was new to MMO’s and a kick ass character creation system. Other than that not much. I know they have improved the game a lot but when I played it, it was a repetitive grindfest. Champions online looks like every other MMO and from what I have seen so does STO. I don’t think Cryptic has the ability to do anything other than a 2nd gen MMO with a different skin. And after all isn’t that what disappointed everyone with WAR so much? Same game, different skin?
12. Agree. EA will not (unless they are rocking the pipe) go against WOW ever again. A 2009 Launch is safe from that.
December 30th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
2. Not likely. AoC will be around for years. It might not keep a very large playerbase, but it will be around. It is Funcom’s biggest MMO effort to date and they are a relatively small company. It has sold better than their previous MMO, Anarchy Online. They are not in a position like NCSoft which has some huge successful titles they can rely on, so they need to show that they can do something with AoC to gain/keep investor confidence.
5. I really doubt that. It is and will be a solid title, but not to an extent that it will stand out from the rest of the crowd significantly.
6. They will likely need to show to their investors that they bring something unique that will attract new and existing MMO players if they are going to survive. The Stargate brand itself will not be enough.
7. I hope it will be a hit.
8. What is the “MMO industry” in this case? There are already multiple companies which do quite well here as far as I can tell with microtransaction-type payment models. If anything I think the payment models may become more diversified – not just subscription or pure microtransaction, but rather a mix of payment options. Any significant changes from the companies who today rely on subcription-based games may come with new titles, but old titles will stay the same or have some minor changes.
11. I think this will be pretty much the same thing as #6. They really need to bring something unique and the brand itself will not be enough, regardless of any movies.
January 1st, 2009 at 3:13 am
I agree on LotRO – since I started with Moria, I’ve found it hard to play anything else, despite my best-laid plans to play two games at once. LotRO is an awesome game and I’m glad people are beginning to realise this
January 1st, 2009 at 9:43 am
Yeah on LotRO — I tried the game with an open mind a couple weeks ago and I was completely blown away and immediately hooked by the lush environments, great gameplay, and wonderful community (I play on an EU-RP server, so no seeing idiots named Dragonlord running around). I am awaiting my copy of the game — damn the holidays and the postal delays *cry* — and I am having so much fun. It really is a gem, and I am kicking myself for not really giving it a chance before this.
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January 15th, 2009 at 8:02 am
6) I’m a huge Stargate Fan. The TV franchise went in the crap the last season or two of SG-1. Atlantis just finished it’s 5 year run, all the while earning less that half the SG-1 audience. Stargate universe is due out later this year and will be much like the next Trek movie i.e. Younger and sexier. It’s been over 2 months since the developers have been paid http://days-since-cheyenne-mountain-employees-have-been-paid.com/
Beta was apparently stopped and Dec and has not been re-started. It’s so bad that they are selling SGW clothing to raise money.
This game is in so much trouble I don’t think even SOE could save it.
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