Hegenox said:I wonder if VR already made some estimations concerning number of players at launch, 5 years after launch etc - and how big would these numbers be. Obviously they need to take such things into consideration for number of servers (not to mention games profits).
This is my 2cents, it is merely observation based on MMOs, the player bases of today and past, etc....
I think Pantheon will have a HUGE reception when the bulk of the market can experience it.
It is number 2, often number 1 on MMORPG.com. This means that most of the mainstream players actually find it of interest. This also worries me with their FTP concepts they are considering. While bandwidth and storage is much cheaper these days, while we have numerous tech to more easily serve heavy load transitiions, even this has a hefty cost when expanded to certain levels.
So, I think it is very likely that Pantheon will see a million+ players on open beta, or release with FTP. I am thinking it might be as high as 2 million or more.
Now how many will they retain? No idea... this will depend on many factors and they may actually retain more than many would expect. I like Brad believe that if you take a mainstreamer, put them into a game where risk vs reward matters, where everything is earned, etc... they will keep playing. Oh... they will lament to extremes, but... they will keep playing (this is why these early MMOs were addicting).
My concern is more with the FTP aspect and them having to scramble and expend too many resources (cost and effort) to handle a large percent of the mainstream market who will just try it to the extent of the "free play" and then move on. That is my main concern.
Tanix said:I like Brad believe that if you take a mainstreamer, put them into a game where risk vs reward matters, where everything is earned, etc... they will keep playing. Oh... they will lament to extremes, but... they will keep playing (this is why these early MMOs were addicting).
Exactly!
I don't think the developers are looking at mass market appeal. Personally, I have a certain dewy-eyed nostalgia looking back at the old days of careful marking, crowd control and slowly dealing with packs by succesively burning single enemies down, and that is largely why I have bought into this game. However, I'm not entirely convinced if this is just me looking back with rose-tinted glasses. I don't know if this playstyle will appeal to the modern gamer in any great numbers - I don't even know if it will really appeal to me anymore. I suspect there may may be a large influx at the start of beta, but I'm not expecting mass long-term appeal, and most will leave in search of quicker thrills. I think there is a sustainable market for this game, but I doubt it will be a mass-market MMO, and to be honest would you really want it to be?
I don't think they're focussed on mainstreaming things either but I'm prepared to see a little bit of it far down the road. In the event that they decide to change things to cater to more people because of funding needs... I will trust them that it is necessary. I don't believe that VR will be out to grab as many subs as they can by any means and, because of that belief, I am ready to accept a little bit of flexing as they see fit for the future of the game. Trust in Pantheon, as Baz says.
Keep in mind folks, it isn't about them going to mainstream, mainstream will come to them.
This is something that I warned them years ago that as the game got closer to release, looked nicer, became more of a reality, that mainstream would flock to consume the game as they do all the MMOs because ALL MMOs are designed for such consumption (it is why people flock from one to the next constantly). Pantheon WILL get hit by mainstream, they willl have at the minimum 100's of thousands "trying" out the game and that number will jump to millions easily if it has FTP access.
This is not a guess... it is a fact based on how the market of FTP access MMOs work and the popularity of this game.
The closest thing they probably have to estimates is "We need X amount of players to remain in business". There's no way to know right now how many will play. Using information gathered from previous games, if they have an open-beta it may be possible to use some of that data to estimate who will play and for how long.
bigdogchris said:The closest thing they probably have to estimates is "We need X amount of players to remain in business". There's no way to know right now how many will play. Using information gathered from previous games, if they have an open-beta it may be possible to use some of that data to estimate who will play and for how long.
This is probably the most accurate at this stage of the game.
As for needing more servers, they are going cloud hosted so they won't have servers. And from what I understand, the host on the cloud will/can nearly automatically open a new "server" as needed.
What are you talking about F2P?!? They‘ve already stated the game isn‘t going to be free to play. Unless you are talking about the free limited time trial they are likely to offer whereby players can try out the game for a short period of time or first few levels. If that’s the case, then I would urge you not to say F2P when you post about it as that means something very different to most people and for many, does not have a good connotation.
Zorkon said:bigdogchris said:The closest thing they probably have to estimates is "We need X amount of players to remain in business". There's no way to know right now how many will play. Using information gathered from previous games, if they have an open-beta it may be possible to use some of that data to estimate who will play and for how long.
This is probably the most accurate at this stage of the game.
As for needing more servers, they are going cloud hosted so they won't have servers. And from what I understand, the host on the cloud will/can nearly automatically open a new "server" as needed.
Cloud is a fancy word for distributed computing. It isn't a new concept, in fact it is as old as the 50's and was originally called "mainframe" computing with numerous dummy terminals that connected to a centeralized resouces. There are various technquies used today ranging from clustering to distributed data management, but the fact is that it stil incurs a cost, it still requires storage and bandwidth. When Brad was going about how they could quickly adapt with such services, he is talking about the ability to rely on a service that can take a small resource allocation and expand it to a large one instantly.
You can see this concept today in many of the server hosting sites that exist for multiplayer games today. Sign up for a server and INSTANTLY your server is setup and running as you need. This is the concept, but here is the catch...
Cost....
While costs are much cheaper than they were in the past to facilate storage and bandwitdth, and they can dynamically assign storage/bandwidth to attend to demand, it doesn't change this one simple fact as it concerns... Free To Play.
That is, if you have 30k paying subs, and then have a FTP portion access to which 2 million NON-Paying accounts are formed, you will need to dynamically increase your bandwidth AND server/storage size to accomodate. You can do this dynamically and near instantly with todays technology, BUT... this still costs money.
So tell me, how will 30k subs pay for not only the development of the game, but also pay for the 1 million + non-paying subs that decide to play the game? Even if it is for a month or two, that is a VERY LARGE expense to put out for a player base who provide NOTHING in value to aid in paying for their resource use.
Maybe VR has a plan, but I honestly don't think they have done the math on this as it wil harm them which is why... in my humble opinion to meet their goals as a niche game, they need to 1) not have FTP anything. and 2) they need to require a box buy in for the game.
Buy doing that they avoid the cost of FTP eating up profits AND they gain a solid proft on release to cover previous development and settle the company for future development.
urgatorbait said:What are you talking about F2P?!? They‘ve already stated the game isn‘t going to be free to play. Unless you are talking about the free limited time trial they are likely to offer whereby players can try out the game for a short period of time or first few levels. If that’s the case, then I would urge you not to say F2P when you post about it as that means something very different to most people and for many, does not have a good connotation.
I think they are making the first 10 levels free, or that is a number I see being thrown around a lot.
Watemper said:urgatorbait said:What are you talking about F2P?!? They‘ve already stated the game isn‘t going to be free to play. Unless you are talking about the free limited time trial they are likely to offer whereby players can try out the game for a short period of time or first few levels. If that’s the case, then I would urge you not to say F2P when you post about it as that means something very different to most people and for many, does not have a good connotation.
I think they are making the first 10 levels free, or that is a number I see being thrown around a lot.
If they force that on all servers, what this tells me is that the first 10 levels will be wasted as I try to rush as fast as I can to get out of the FTP access area which will be infected by the numerous abuses and obstacles that exist in FTP content in a game that has contested content. So, to me.. the first 10 levels will be a hell I try to fast push through.
If VR forces this on all servers, this fact may even cause me to not play the game at all. It is a bad decision across the board.
There is some info in this already open thread
As well as this is not Brads first Rodeo so I'm sure they will have it covered when the time comes.
Edit:
"We used it all," laughs John Smedley, one of EverQuest's creators. "All of it. It was the largest internet connection into San Diego and it was constantly going down. It messed up internet here in San Diego for a good solid week."
My concern is my assumption of the overall gaming zeitgeist.
These days I think the mindset is to beat the game as fast as possible. Plus, there is not a one-game mindset, rather there is a multiple game mindset so a player may play one game for some months then leave perhaps after beating it, then play another game for some months, etc. Then maybe come back to the first game in a year.
I am worried about 2 things:
1. Perception from the world. Pantheon may start off with a million or two, then I think it will drop down to the niche population. Then may spike form time to time as account holders pop back in every few months. Should the game only be looked at from those spikes it may be judged differently than say- a 20 year old game that is still publishing expansions. This may create customer service issues as players wish to suspend their accounts for however long they wish to be away.
2. Here's the thing, I am concerned that those non-niche may come back at random times and find themselves unable to pick up where they left off. What is going to stop an existing player from halting their own progresion to aid a returning player? I thought horizontal progression could be an answer to this as the adventure would be all and there would be no levels per se, just players better at doing things with skill. so a player could return after say 10 years and need help with a quest of which there would be an abundance of, or find a PuG to grind somewhere and will still be desired because of the class although the skill level is relatively low. mentoring is a possible solution, as horizontal leveling.
bryanleo9 said: I don't see millions playing pantheon. I can see 400 -500k like EQ 1 had at peak and that is just fine with me.
Maybe, but consider that the gaming generation back when EQ was around was MUCH smaller. Most people back then didn't PC game, most didn't even own PCs to any level to be able to play these types of games.
WoW became so popular because it marketed to a group that were not gamers (also WoW would run on an old non-gaming computer with ease). The bulk of WoWs subs were people who never played much games past a console game before WoW came out. I watched people I worked with who used to look down on people who played a game like EQ become avid WoW players eventually.
Today's market is comprised of many people who do not view games and gamers with negative opinion. There will be a higher concentration of people likely to try a game like Pantheon, especially if it is hyped enough (and it is hyped pretty heavily on MMORPG.com without the company trying to market excessively).
Of course they have. It would be incredibly amateurish not to. They've already structured things so that they can be profitable with less than 100,000 subscriptions. (Source: https://www.firesofheaven.org/threads/pantheon-ama-responses.10091/ ;) I personally think it's likely that as long as launch goes well, Pantheon will have much more than that, considering that's about how many subscriptions Vanguard had, and that was considered to be a failed launch. But it's still good that Pantheon is not counting on mass appeal and is being relatively frugal so that they can safely sustain longterm growth. That's the important part. As far as the amount of servers go, since they can put them up pretty easily, they can just determine that later once they have more solid data in Alpha and Beta.
Bazgrim said:Of course they have. It would be incredibly amateurish not to. They've already structured things so that they can be profitable with less than 100,000 subscriptions. (Source: https://www.firesofheaven.org/threads/pantheon-ama-responses.10091/ ;) I personally think it's likely that as long as launch goes well, Pantheon will have much more than that, considering that's about how many subscriptions Vanguard had, and that was considered to be a failed launch. But it's still good that Pantheon is not counting on mass appeal and is being relatively frugal so that they can safely sustain longterm growth. That's the important part. As far as the amount of servers go, since they can put them up pretty easily, they can just determine that later once they have more solid data in Alpha and Beta.
I really like the fact that they have a plan in place for 100k subs. In the back of my mind I worried that this idea, focused on a niche group maybe would not be able to actually survive and thrive with a niche subscription base.
I hate to say it because at the same time it means less success to the company but I really really prefer a smaller community than a massive one. I really want this game to be successful and wish VR to achieve their goals but at the same time secretly want this to be an under the radar gem too with a niche community that the typical MMO player that frequents the genre these days passes by. Im a selfish human being, I know.
Hegenox said:I wonder if VR already made some estimations concerning number of players at launch, 5 years after launch etc - and how big would these numbers be. Obviously they need to take such things into consideration for number of servers (not to mention games profits).
Ben Dean, Producer & Director of Communication from VR has stated that just 10k subscription players would be sustainable for this game
henrycc265 said:Ben Dean, Producer & Director of Communication from VR has stated that just 10k subscription players would be sustainable for this game
I don't doubt it, though there is probably a disinction to be considered between 'sustainibility' and active ongoing development.
Ghool said: Also keep in mind that 'stability' in the current corporate climate actually means , 'unlimited and infinite growth year after year'. And if that model isn't sustained, it's considered a 'failure'. Folks have a really skewed perspective of what success and sustainability means in business because of this, when in reality, all that is required for sustainability is a steady profit margin that maintains itself year after year. That's what success used to mean to a business, not this impossible growth every single year. This is also why companies spend so much on marketing these days as well.
Exactly, and this is what Brad has talked about in the past as to why Pantheon will suceed. They aren't designing the game to chase after corporate profit concepts, they just need enough subs to meet a certain margin that will keep the game going and allow them to continue to make new content. If you do the math on that kind of expectation, sucess is very likely.
That said, this won't stop the issues of mainstream coming to the game and the issues with a large market playing the FTP portion of the game, using resources, but not paying anything back into the game.
Hegenox said:I wonder if VR already made some estimations concerning number of players at launch, 5 years after launch etc - and how big would these numbers be. Obviously they need to take such things into consideration for number of servers (not to mention games profits).
I've been super excited about Pantheon for awhile now. I've been talking it up as often as I can, especially the perception system they're designing.
So I'm hoping it will get a solid following.