Developer Reputation In MMO's? Opinions?

Star Wars: The Old Republic and The Secret World have got me thinking about an interesting issue.

I feel that these days a developer with a poor reputation has it easier than a developer with a good reputation. The world of MMORPG's is extremely competitive. You get on average 1 new P2P game out yearly, and flocks of f2p get released all the time. The goal is to set yourself apart, experiment. Every new mmo borrows bits from other mmo's.

Now back to SWTOR and TSW....

When star wars was getting released there was BIG hype behind it, big budget, story mmo, everyone in the party affects cutscenes. Not to mention .. well.. it is star wars.. theres plenty of hype in that one fact alone. Bioware is a huge name as well.. Mass effect, dragon age, baldurs gate, neverwinter nights... they have quite the good reputation...

Funcom on the other hand has not had the same luck. Anarchy online and Age of Conan both... well people play it, they enjoy it.. but they both don't have high ratings. Poor experiences with funcom themselves have led to a general distrust, not to mention people don't trust EA either(though that mistrust is invalid, cuz EA has nothing to do with the game) but.. distrust by association I suppose...


Bottom line is I believe people go into a game with a general level standards....

For the sake of argument lets give both games a rating of 5/10

Due to bioware's reputation people go into the game EXPECTING a 10/10 and they get a 5/10 so are peeved.

Due to funcom's reputation people go into the game EXPECTING a 1/10 and get the 5/10 and we are happy and impresssed. 'wow this is better than expected.'

What do you all think?

Do bad reputation developer's have it easier?(assuming they actually pull a golden egg?)

Though EA has little to do with the game itself, the publisher has more control over what happens with the game than you think. Even if only on a superficial level, knowing that EA pulls strings in terms of game acquisition, payment methods, unwarrented DLC, and other things, it's enough to shy away any gamer that is more informed on business practices from specific companies.

I only had to try Origin once til I contemplated gouging my eyes out with a spork while screaming in anguish: "NEVER AGAIN!"

Ok that kinda explains the issue with EA themselves... but doesnt answer my question^^

yes, people's expectations play a role in how they rate things. But their expectations should and the developers should know those expectations.

Honestly I was over all disappointed with star wars because
A. the graphics for a 2012 mmo were ***.
B. The game was a mmo clone of point and click, with a good quest lines/voice acting.
everything about it besides the story lines and quests/voice acting was sub-par, and because it was bio-ware and they were making such a big deal (themselves) I expected more.

I've yet to try TSW, and doubt I will. lately most mmos have been big disappointments and a waste of 50-60 bucks. The only mmo I'll touch to see if I enjoy it will be ffxiv version 2.0 and I may not even enjoy it so who knows. Their are simply better ways to have fun with a hobby you can do with others.

Reputations tend to preceed individuals as well as companies as a whole. From a business perspective, companies with a bad reputation do not have it easier as it is significantly more difficult for developers, publishers, and marketers to convince their target audience to give them a chance. Especially in the MMO field, you only get one shot at first impressions and establishing your (paying) player base. If that fails, then it's a slow and painful loss of return from projected expenses.

Even with relatively successful companies like Square-Enix can't seem to compete as well as others in terms of the MMO industry. And with the failed launch of XIV, it is very unlikely we'll see another high-budget P2P MMO from them again, anytime soon. Luckily for them they had already established a small but solid player base for XI.

The grounds for success in an MMO lies within marketing to a massive audience, and having a game foundation conducive to keeping that player base playing, and thus paying month after month. If the foundation is faulty or there isn't enough content and patches to keep people interested, the majority of players will simply get their kicks within the first few weeks then leave for something new and fresh. Of course this speaks on behalf of the general community more so than those of us that may be more or less considered "devotees".

I would think people might have lower standards, and then be easier to be pleasantly surprised. But overall, more customers are probably going to go to the developer with the better reputation without even trying the other one's games.

So with my vast powers of wild guessing... it's a wash! :D

My expectations are so low for the FFXI dev team right now that I may end up shatting my pants when the expansion is released if it's any good. If not, well, life goes on.

Hey, the official *** about SE thread for today is over here. Just FYI.

I guess..

I guess just imo, people have 2 sets of expactations:

Expectation 1: Game has to be at the level of existing mmo's, and have a 'finished' feel to it. Patches should updates that are valid upgrades not stuff that should have been included at launch and patches should only being fixing 'stress' bugs at most. By stress I mean issues caused by having such a large flux of players putting load on the servers. Though even these can be tested with stress tests during beta.

Expectation 2: The developer and Publisher. As has been stated previously AoC has caused lack of faith in Funcom and people trust EA "As far as I can see with this visor, and with the dust and condensation build up that's not very far... not far at all"

This part is impossible. You can plan for anything all you want, and it never amounts to actually doing said thing.

Stress tests never put the same load on the machines that hundreds of thousands of users does. The same goes for all of those benchmark tests games put out to "test" your machine for the ability to handle the game. People run the bench just fine, then the game crashes on them.

Combat/flight simulators fit under the same accord. Air Force pilots spend hundreds of hours testing every possible situation. A real instance in a real aircraft always works out a little bit differently and causes a level of stress on the individual that the simulations could never reproduce.

Developer/publisher is really important to me when buying a game. Generally the EA logo turns me away, and tbh I do not feel as if I have missed out on much. I made two exceptions in the last year with EA, KoA:Reckoning and BF3. Both were based on the developer, I wanted to give 38 studios a chance and I dont regret it in the slightest. KoA was a great game, and I am pretty annoyed with EA for not providing the dev enough support to save it from going bankrupt. Because I think the KoA series would have made EA a lot of money.

BF3 on the other hand is same old EA. It had no chance of toppling CoD (as bad as MW3 is) despite the stupid marketing plan they pushed out claiming otherwise, and since launch DICE has done a so-so job of supporting the game (first patch in January, 2+ months after release). But EA decided to take down the DICE servers and install custom servers in May and that caused riots to the point where they had to reopen the DICE servers, but the game is still a clusterfuck, pre-Halo 2 matchmaking. I dont know whether its just the community or DICE but people try to play that game like CoD and I haven't touched it in months. They rolled out BF3 Elite and I just lol'd.

I don't know what EA is thinking at this point, they have planned DLC for BF3 through next Spring but they are releasing Medal of Honor this year (instead of next, which would make WAY more sense cuz this yr's FPS market is FLOODED), direct competition for BF3. Black Ops 2 and Halo 4 are going to be titanic releases, which is not a prediction, so where are people going to find time to play BF3 I don't know.

I played SWTOR just this last week for free, just DL'd the game and got to level 15, and yes it has a lot of potential, albeit nothing really innovating, but not for 16 bucks a month. I will wait for it go F2P or at least slash the sub fee in half. I used to really like Bioware, but after DA2, Mass Effect 2 and 3, and now SWTOR, my affection for them has cooled. But again, a lot of this can probably be attributed to EA getting in the way of the dev.

The Secret World, again, EA releasing competition for its own previously released *struggling* MMO, great plan. And Funcom is lol. Not worth paying to play this game either.

Oh well, to me this just proves my point.. A lot of you wont try the game specifically because 'funcom this' or 'EA that' but IF you were to try it i can bet most would be pleasantly suprised.

I don't know, i guess wierd logic.

SWTOR I think is a decent game, problem is I hate pvp, and thats kind of what it is reduced to.(once you hit cap and all quests are done)

If it was a one time buy offline game, ie KoA, I would be fine with it. But with a P2P MMO, I am having to give my money to a company that I do not trust, who has a track record of sucking. Not happening. This is a persistent online game, that needs constant support, people put their faith in SE and look where that got them. Years of stagnation followed by complete overhaul followed by more stagnation.

/translation= SE gave us an awesome game, and continues to deliver^^ maybe I am a fanboy but who cares! lol.

I mess with other games, but ffxi is and always will be my main game. Abyssea was best upgrade ever because they finally introduced Achievements into the game!

Abyssea has achievements? o.o...

Yes there called Atma.


Max craft skill, do max fishing quest, assault, nyzul, various hnms, complete missions.

Synthetic Atma = Achievement system.

I personally would just consider the rest of what you said as personal achievements, just not collecting atma. Maybe if you obtained all of them that would be a personal achievement, but not them by themselves I wouldn't. I suppose others look at them differently than I do though.

Only missing 8^^

I don't think you understood what I said. What I said and Atma are one in the same.

SYNTHETIC ATMA = ACHIEVEMENTS

I understand fine.

oh well guess I am just confused by your response lol.

I'm anxious to see some facts to back this up. Companies with good reputations have been going down since I started playing video games (RBI Baseball 2, 1989, in case you were wondering).

I do not think bad reputation developers have it easier. Maybe from a critics point of view where you go to metacritic and say hey i thought this was going to be a 1/10 but instead it's a 5/10. The fact of the matter is, if their reputation is in the toilet no one is going to buy the game in the first place. Bioware could release a rubbish game like dragon age 2 repeating maps over and over again and it'd still sell millions it'd just piss off their fans until they end up having the bad reputation. Which they seem to really want badly by the way.

In regards to MMOs I think the main problem is budgeting everyone has been making high budget games chasing after that WoW gold and it simply doesn't work out. These bad rep developers aren't going into the game thinking they want to kill WoW. They're going into the game thinking we're gonna put in a lot of shitty cash shop items and make the old items obsolete every month or so. They keep their budget low and leech the money out with cash shops.

Take Diablo 3 for example, Blizzard has a relatively good reputation. They didn't spend much money on that game it's only a few hours long, has sub hd graphics, and they cut out a lot things like pvp. That game still sold like 6million on day one and if u go over to the general discussion on the d3 forums you'll see a lot of people are quite upset with the game. If funcom or someone else developed a similar game it would not reach those sales even if it were better than Diablo 2.

The process of taking a high quality developer and running their brand name into the ground just takes awhile. There's a period where their games will still sell despite showing the decline in quality, but consumers learn after awhile. Eventually they're making games like Sonic the Werehog and selling very poorly. When they finally get their act together it's usually too late and no one even thinks of touching a sonic game, which have gotten better recently.

Well you are not going to get any 'facts' sorry. At least not from me. I was expressing the way I personally feel, it is just an opinion and I wanted to create discussion.

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In regards to everyone else... Ty for enlightening me, I enjoy it.

Bad rep developers I see will have a harder time selling lots and lots of copies but again my original point remains.

It is EASIER for them to IMPRESS you with there game. Many people may not buy it in the first place... but for those that do they probably have such low expectations that exceeding those expectations becomes easy. We are 'looking' for trash so to speak.. and when we find that 'diamond in the rough' the world just becomes good...

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BTW, lets give another example in a different perspective.

The Avengers is the top selling opening weekend movie(or if thats in correct it is at least up there in rankings). Now the problem with this is everyones STANDARD for this movie Franchise is SOOO epicly high that The Avengers 2 HAS TO meet or exceed that Bar. Even if the movie is utter garbage, it is going to sell MANY MANY tickets. But after day 1 word of mouth will spread like a disease and ticket sales will drop off.

Now, lets Assume The Avengers was a Flop instead of mega success. But they still decide to make an The Avengers 2. Let's say The Avengers 2 is the quality that part 1 should have been.. or even higher quality. Opening weekend will be slow.. or at least a lot slower than it should be. But word of mouth will spread just the same way... and people will get to the movie because friends tell them 'this is awesome'
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Bleh.... sorry.. stopping.. i think i am droning on now... lol

I guess really my bottomline is that companies can Achieve a Reputation that is TOO HIGH. And they then can't compete with themselves anymore.