A Bad Year For New MMOs

EVE Online is getting a lot of press recently for its massive battles and player wars.  But I can't help but wonder what the coverage would look like on the gaming sites if the game publishers were coming out with massive AAA titles this year.  From what I can tell, the biggest so far this year is Neverwinter, which is based on Dungeons and Dragons.  Last year, August brought Guild Wars 2.  This year?  According to Amazon we'll see the rebirth of Final Fantasy XIV although we'll probably not find out officially until 8 August.

We may not even see a AAA game released during the Christmas season.  The Elder Scrolls Online isn't scheduled for release until Q2 next year.  After watching the Wildstar show on Gamebreaker I doubt we'll see Carbine launch the game this year.  And I really doubt that John Smedley is going to announce that EverQuest Next will launch this year at SOE Live tomorrow.

Of course, that just gives CCP and its players even more time to influence the future of the genre.  EVE influencing other companies?  Smedley apparently has bought into the whole "emergent gameplay" theory and we see EVE's influence on Planetside 2.  This year the buzzword among developers is "sandbox".  I keep reading about how all these new games will have sandbox elements.  At last year's SOE Live Smedley even stated that EverQuest Next would be the "largest sandbox MMO" ever created.

But until these other games launch and we can see if they live up to expectations, the gaming press will need content to fill up their web pages for those all so precious hits.  And if the gaming press actually winds up covering the actions of gamers instead of game companies, is it surprising that the mainstream media follows?

EQ2 Makes The Wall Street Journal

Yesterday The Wall Street Journal web site had a story about the big gaming companies moving from subscription to free-to-play models for MMOs  (no subscription required to access the story, at least for now).

The event that triggered the story?  SOE's move to make a F2P service for EverQuest 2.  So it isn't just the EQ2 player base or MMO bloggers paying attention to the story.

Wrath of the Lich King Approved For Chinese Market

Last week I wrote a post mentioning that the expansions for Eve Online on the Serenity server, the one Chinese players play on, lag by several months.  But Eve is not the only Western MMO in which this occurs.  Last Friday, the People's Republic's General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) reportedly approved Blizzard's Wrath of the Lich King expansion for World of Warcraft for release in the PRC, although the game still needs approval from the Ministry of Culture.  The expansion could finally hit the Chinese market as early as August, or 22 months after the original release of WotLK on 13 November 2008.

Unlike Eve, WoW got caught up in bureaucratic in-fighting between two government agencies.  I guess being an Icelandic company has its advantages.  Well, and CCP developing DUST 514 in Shanghai probably doesn't hurt either.