MMO and MMORPG Musings – MMO Crazy

A report by Screen Digest was released today and it shows that MMO subscription revenues rose from $1.4 billion in 2008 to $1.6 billion in 2009. That’s not a bad clip of growth, unless you measure it against the growth of free to play MMOs. That market is currently $250 million a year in the US and expected to surpass $2 billion by 2015. Despite the coming dominance of free to play in the MMO industry, there will still be a room for subscriptions. They already exist as optional packages in several F2P games including Dungeons and Dragons Online and The Lord of the Rings Online. Then there’s World of Warcraft which still commands 54% of all subscription based revenue in the Western market (down from 60%.)

So how will subscription based, or premium, MMORPGs survive in the future landscape? They’ll forge a third path by offering ‘Freemium’ services. Also known as ‘Unlimited Free Trials’ this method involves giving players free access to the beginner areas or features in a game, but locking the rest behind a monthly or yearly subscription. This method has been especially successful among MMORPGs aimed at children. My favorite one to date is Wizard101, a client based fantasy MMORPG with a Harry Potter like theme. Besides great graphics and production value, it has a unique turn based combat system where players cast spells using cards. It has a large persistent world to explore, but everything always feels close by and the transition between battles and the turn based combat is done fluidly.

But long before Wizard101, the freemium model has been put to use by browser based games. The Disney Corporation has been the most prolific with its freemiuim browser MMO offers. Since purchasing Club Penguin, they have released a number of additional titles including Pixie Hollow and The Pirates of the Caribbean Online. Disney also has a freemium client MMORPG called Toon Town that enjoys modest subscription numbers. Virtual worlds where players mainly go to socialize has been another hot genre for freemium business models. Habbo Hotel and INVU are some great examples. Access is free, but to enjoy all the perks, a subscription is required.

Traditional MMORPGs that are too scared to go completely free to play have struck the middle ground. Warhammer Online comes to mind. Several months ago they unveiled their ‘Unlimited Free Trial’ which allows users to play as long as they want. The catch? They can’t progress past level 10. That gives them ample opportunity to experience what WAR has to offer without having to worry about paying for a box or subscription. Oddly enough, its not just newcomers adopting the freemium business model. Many dated MMOs, well past their prime, have implemented unlimited free trials to try and gain some fresh blood. One of my first MMORPGs was a little Korean game called Nexus: The Kingdom of the Three Winds. Back when I played, the free trial only lasted until level 7 or so. Now players can enjoy this quirky 2D game until level 49 without paying a dime. The studio that publishes Nexus is KRU Interactive which is also behind the early MMORTS Shattered Galaxy. That game is also free to play, up to a point. A subscription is required to purchase many of the units. KRU has another 2D fantasy MMORPG called Dark Ages which also offers free content, but requires a monthly subscription to gain complete access.

I predict a bright future for games that use the freemium model.There’s a huge, untapped market for games, especially at the casual level. Expect the success of Club Penguin and Wizard101 to spawn many more free-to-play-up-to-a-point games.

One of the most interesting trends in the MMORPG market today is the conversion of previously pay to play games to the free to play model. This isn’t an entirely new phenomenon, but what has changed is the implementation. If a MMORPG announced it was ditching its subscription fee several years ago, it was automatically assumed that the game had failed and was on the way out. This happened to be the case with Shadowbane, a PvP oriented fantasy MMORPG that was hyped as the successor to Ultima Online. It didn’t perform well and when the monthly fee was stripped away, it manged to stay afloat for several more years before being put to rest.

Fast forward to 2009 and you have a slightly different online landscape. Free to play is no longer a niche for indie games. Mass market, triple A titles like MapleStory are making a fortune through optional microtransactions. Western studios, finally feeling the 2007-2008 recession, are looking for new growth areas. Who makes the first move? Turbine with their Dungeons and Dragons Online MMORPG. Long languishing on the sidelines, DDO was unable to compete with that other 3D fantasy themed MMORPG on the market — World of Warcraft. DDO had a unique gameplay structure based off classic tabletop D&D adventures. It was heavily instanced based and modular. The developers got the notion that they could offer the beginner content for free and charge for access to certain parts. Several classes, dungeons, and features all require one-time payments now. This was a risky move by Turbine, but it payed off. The subscription figures for the game actually went up after it was converted to a free to play game. The new optional subscription offered players access to all the content in the game, provided they pay the fee each month.

Buoyed by their success, Turbine went ahead with plans to convert their other major MMORPG project to F2P. That title was The Lord of the Rings Online. This was another bold move since LOTRO wasn’t performing as poorly as DDO. It has a relatively large subscriber based, tampering with the business model so profoundly could have back fired. But Turbine pressed ahead and the free to play version of The Lord of the Rings Online went live in September 2010. It remains to be seen how well it will perform, but I believe it will bring new life to the game, just as going f2p has for DDO.

For many years, most established players in the MMO industry were content to sit on their hands and watch the new Korean and Chinese upstarts dominate the free to play market. Perhaps it was Turbine’s move that finally woke them up. Sony Online Entertainment, the publishers of the classic MMORPG EverQuest began to dabble in the free to play market with Free Realms, a ‘freemium’ title aimed at kids. It was followed up by Clone Wars Adventures, a Star Wars themed game built on the same engine. While these were steps in the right direction, it was the announcement of EverQuest 2: Extended that showed Sony’s full acceptance of the new business model. The subscription based servers for EverQuest 2 would remain unchanged, but a new service with the subtitle ‘Extended’ would allow players to enjoy EverQuest 2 for free. Again, a chunk of the content would need to be purchased but at least the entry fees were removed.

There’s no sign yet for Activision Blizzard’s World of Warcraft changing its payment model, but it has dabbled with micro transactions. WoW recently offered an epic flying mount for a one time fee of $25. The response was overwhelming, estimates say they made over $3 million in a few hours. While WoW may not get the F2P conversion, expect serious talks on the issue for any future MMORPGs Blizzard is currently developing. Speaking of MMORPGs in development, Electronic Arts has its own Star Wars themed game coming out soon. Star Wars: The Old Republic is one of the highest budgeted games of all time. Bioware, recently aquired by EA, has poured hundreds of pages of lore and backstory in the game. In fact, Bioware states that it has more text than all their previous games combined. Perhaps there’s still room for such high quality, premium MMORPGs that charge a subscription, but only time will tell. A more episodic MMORPG released over 10 or more years could have been easier to develop and been much more financially stable. As it stands now, EA is placing a huge wager on one product.

Remember playing console games when you were growing up? I do. Some of them were great, some were just okay, while others stunk. Gamers had to purchase console games at the store or borrow them from a friend who had done the same. It only took a dozen or so hours to beat a console game, though gamers could eek out 100 hours from some of the better RPGs. Those were simpler times. But now gaming has evolved. Enter the MMO.

Free to play, free to download, and always online. That’s the new model for gaming. There’s a whole range of free to play online games available today for every genre. Looking for a shooter? Try Alliance of Valiant Arms or Combat Arms. Don’t have the latest graphics card? Not a problem, play Cross Fire or Mission Against Terror. Maybe first person shooters aren’t your style. S4 League and GunZ: The Duel are both great third person shooters.

Racing games have always had their place in my heart since Mario Kart. Today, even some of the best known racing franchises have free to play online version, just look at Need for Speed World. More anime style racing games are also available like Tales Runner. Like Mario Kart, Tales Runner has multiple modes, its not just about going in circles around a track.

Racing games and shooters are both coming into their own online, but the real action lies in a relatively new genre known as the MMORPG. Players can spend hundreds of hours in a MMORPG just to get the basics down. They offer so much more value than the old $50 retail console games. Some of the best known free to play MMORPGs are MapleStory by Nexon which boasts over a hundred million registered accounts worldwide. Even previously subscription based MMORPGs like EverQuest 2, The Lord of the Rings Online, and Dungeons and Dragons Online are now free to play. This trend will continue as more and more video games and genres switch over to the free to play model.

Even gamers who are at school or work aren’t left out. The rapid growth of online gaming also include browser based games which have grown in sophistication and graphic prowess. Not long ago the average browser game was either a small flash based minigame or a text based simulator. Now there are hundreds of strategy games where players manage empires, train soldiers, and conquer their neighbors. There are even fully 3D browser games powered by Unity, a powerful game development tool that has a basic version available for free.

Stick around on the MMO Crazy blog to learn more about every aspect of the MMO and MMORPG industry. We’ll cover the history of the genre, the different payment models publishers use and how they work, what the emergence of the MMO market means for the future of video gaming, and much more. Needless to say, I’m crazy about MMOs and want to share my inside information with you!