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August 24th, 2012Top StoryThis Week's Most Popular Posts: August 18th to 24th
How Do I Torrent Safely Now That Demonoid Is Down?Dear Lifehacker, Top 10 Tools That Are Better in the Command LineTyping commands into a terminal may seem tedious, but with the right tools, the command line can be incredibly powerful. Here are our favorite command line tools that do awesome things you just can't match in a GUI. More » How I Built the Media Center of My Dreams for Under $500Between the Blu-Ray player, cable box, laptop, and everything else hooked up to your TV, your home theater situation is a mess. Here's how I rolled all those devices into one awesome media center-the media center of my dreams-for under $500. More » The Interview Question That's Always Asked (and How to Nail It)"Do you have any questions for us?" As someone who regularly conducts interviews, I find it staggering how many interviewees are not prepared for the one question that you can be absolutely certain will be asked. More » Your Clever Password Tricks Aren't Protecting You from Today's HackersSecurity breaches happen so often, you're probably sick of hearing about them and all the ways you should beef up your accounts. The trouble is, today's password-cracking tools are more advanced and cut through the most common, "clever" password tricks. More » The Most Annoying Things You Do with Your Phone That You Should Quit (or At Least Be Aware Of)Talking on the phone while driving; checking Facebook at the dinner table; taking pictures of everything. We're all annoying someone with the way we use our phones. More » Make Any Lamp Cordless for Under $20Most lamps come with short cords that not only ugly up your office, but don't always reach the wall without an equally ugly extension cord. Save yourself the mess by making your lamp cordless. More » If Your Job Sucks, It Might Be Your Fault; Let's Fix ThatIt's inevitable. After enough time at any job, you have a day that really sucks. Then, eventually, maybe another. And another. Suddenly the job you loved starts to feel like, well, work. More » Make a Smarter Notification System for Your Phone or Tablet with PushoverNo offense, but your phone's notification system sucks. With a clever app called Pushover, you can create your own custom notification system that's a heck of a lot smarter, so your phone only bothers you with notifications you want, when you want them. More » Want to Be a Great Leader? Start ReadingEven though global literacy rates are high (84%), people are reading less and less deeply. This trend is especially detrimental to those in leadership roles. More » Experience Hours in an Instant with These Time Lapse WallpapersPhotos generally capture a moment. With time lapse photography they can record the path of hours or days, creating beautiful visual effects that make for some great wallpapers. More »  |
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August 24th, 2012Top StoryThe Subscription MMO Is DeadBy Kate Cox
It had a good run, really. Fifteen years is quite a long time for anything to stay static in the land of gaming. World of Warcraft remains the undisputed king of the "traditional" monthly subscription MMOG, yet even its dominance is waning. Blizzard's most recently quarterly numbers put the subscriber base around the nine million mark, a significant decline from the plateau of 10-12 million they held steady at for several years. Other games in the Western, big-budget MMO space have long since gone free-to-play. All of Sony Online Entertainment's titles, including EverQuest and its successor, EverQuest II, are now without a subscription fee. City of Heroes and Lord of the Rings Online haven't required a monthly charge in several years. DC Universe Online saw a 700% jump in revenue when it became free. And years before the others converted to free games, Guild Wars had already formed a devoted fan base without ever requiring a monthly fee. Then of course there are the browser-based games: while generally still less well-regarded among American audiences, they boast participant figures that even World of Warcraft in its heyday could barely dream of. RuneScape, in its decade online, has gone well past the 200 million player mark. So why, then, does the specter of a decade long gone still hover over otherwise-good games and prevent them from being successful? Star Wars: The Old Republic, launched by BioWare at the end of last year, and The Secret World, brought online by Funcom this summer, both looked to be promising games. The former uses the setting from Knights of the Old Republic, which to this day is still lauded by its many fans. BioWare's story-driven, dialogue-driven style of play, as made popular in KOTOR as well as in the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series, was an immediate draw, and SW:TOR sold well over a million copies right out of the gate. Unfortunately, the subscribers didn't stay. By the beginning of this summer, there were fewer than a million remaining, and BioWare Austin had been hit hard by waves of layoffs. In July, EA gave the impression of caving in, and announced that the game would go free to play this November. The Secret World, meanwhile, hoped to be an entirely different sort of game. It dispensed entirely with common tropes like leveling or set classes, and instead hoped for a more free-form experience set in a modern-day Earth. Despite provocative storytelling and regular content updates, though, Funcom has not been able to attract the required subscribers to their venture. This week, they laid off half their staff.
Players, and potential players, aren't stupid. As every previous big-budget MMORPG, with the exception of World of Warcraft, has inevitably gone to a free-to-play model, they will wait on the sidelines until their new game of choice follows suit. The audience has become a self-fulfilling prophecy: unwilling to pick up a game until it has gone free-to-play, a game must then go free-to-play to gain those players. MMORPGs are also now faced with the simple fact that competition has driven down prices. As players can dabble in so many without paying a flat fee, there are other places to go. There will not be another license to print money like World of Warcraft was. The audience is done paying up-front for the box and continuing to pay a third as much again each month thereafter for continued access. Persistent multiplayer environments are not the novelty they once were, and the subscription model now feels like the antiquated relic of a time gone by. The Secret World is certain eventually to follow in the footsteps of SW:TOR and nearly every other MMORPG before it, and go free-to-play if it wishes its audience to grow. The games themselves are getting better, and more varied, than ever. They aren't all traditional fantasy RPGs anymore; some are shooters, and others are exploring all kinds of environments and play. But the one thing that almost all the new online games have in common is that they will not require a monthly fee. The subscription model is dead. Star Wars: The Old Republic and The Secret World have both suffered for trying to eke one more year of life out of it. Let us hope they are the last to try. Because the future is here, and it's free.* * Except for that hat. And that horse. And that house...  |
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