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Douglas MacArthur
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Posted - 2008.06.02 17:20:00 -
[1]
This post was meant to be just a thought provocation really, just to make players of eve online and devs think about the future of the game.
In my view the key driver of eve succes as a game, in terms of how much people enjoy playing it and obviously commercial success for the company is the number of subscribers. Looking at some statistics it appears that today we have around 180,000 to 200,000 acounts vis-a-vis beginning where we had ~20,000. That implies CAGR rate (rate at which population should've grown every year on average in order to reach from 20k to ~200k) of 70%. That is relativelly big number, if game would continue growing annualy at the same rate then you coudl in principle deem it a succes.
On the other hand if you look at WOW, we could see a bit different dynamics in there. I don't the official stats per se, but latests numbers show game has somewhat around 8,000,000 players. If we assume (for the sake of the calculation) that player base for wow at the begining was around 20k (same as EVE) then implied CAGR rate would be 350% anually.
I don't mean to draw any parallels between gameplay, merelly just for comparison purposes at WOW appears to be the closesst peer to EVE online.
So what can we learn from those numbers ? At the moment it appears that growth of eve population is somewhat stagnant, which is very disturbing sign to me. In my opinion one of the reasons for this is technical limitations which the game has. Lets take major fleet battles in 0.0, beyond some point the encounter is just not possible because of lags. In addition the fact that chineese cluster of the game was not connected to the european cluster suggests to me that technical limitation may indeed be the case. I'm quite confident that EVE online would get an "injection" of healthy competition from Chineese players the whole community would benefit. We would see more alliances, more aggresive game play and overall more fun. However CCP decided to implement 2 worlds separetely.
That suggests to me, "shard" technology of WOW may indeed be more superior to "single shard" technology. In Economics terms you can look at this process as at "convergence" of less superior model to a more superior and more efficient model.
In my view that is something devs really need to think about.
In terms of gameplay I think EVE does have a unique and very interesting system which is by no means any respect inferior to WOW or any other MMORPG.
What I'm trying to explain here, is that I do not see any reasons apart from technological ones, which stop EVE online from capitalizing on booming internet growth and popularity of MMORPGs.
Any thoughts on this ?
What I would really want to achieve by this is to (again) provoke some thoughts, that may potentially make EVE online much better and BIGGER game in the long term !
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Eventy One
Magellan Exploration and Survey
Phoenix Rising Alliance
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Posted - 2008.06.02 17:23:00 -
[2]
You were a terrible General btw.
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KayaYautja
Ore Mongers
Black Hand.
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Posted - 2008.06.02 17:29:00 -
[3]
As soon as EvE starts working like WoW and uses Shards, I'll be quitting. As will a good number of people i think.
The fact that EvE is one persistent world where everyone can interact with everyone else at any given time is what makes EvE so good.
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I'm the omega |
Armoured C
Globaltech Industries
The ENTITY.
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Posted - 2008.06.02 17:31:00 -
[4]
Edited by: Armoured C on 02/06/2008 17:31:24
if you want to shard eve then eve isnt eve anymore
the idea of it is that everything thing you do effects the entire game
also although we may not have the numbers of wow we have had a steady increase of member since the game started , wow doesn't and flucuates way to much and the fact that people are leaving as more current generations are wanting to try out new fantasy MMO's there subscriber base will slowly decrease but wont stop
you really cant but the subscripton numbers to that off eve as there really isnt any stand up sci fi MMO, it not this mmo vs that mmo you have to put figures to the same genre MMO as it only attackt perticular people
there will be a slow stagnent point when jumpgate pops it rear around here but the graphic of the ships look like preschoolers did it and the station look very weird and blocky for a current generation but every MMO has there own selling point jumpgate is that your skill is what matters in eve it is a non-sharded awsome PVP cruel world game and wow is just for it PVE and massive amount of players i suppose
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Larg Kellein
Agony Unleashed
Agony Empire
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Posted - 2008.06.02 17:41:00 -
[5]
Edited by: Larg Kellein on 02/06/2008 17:42:31
Several errors in the premise of your suggested growth rate:
First of all, the fundamental difference between the two games. Eve is, by the dev team's own admission, a niche game and is intended to be so, despite the fact that they obviously don't hate seeing increasing subscription numbers. WOW, on the other hand, is the definition of mainstream.
WOW is also built on existing (and wildly popular IP) whereas there was no name recognition involved in the launch of Eve. WoW sold about a quarter of a million copies on release day in the US alone.
As for sharding vs. non-sharding: As long as the server can keep up, I doubt it has any impact on subscriber numbers. At least not favoring sharding. If anything, a selling point for Eve is that if you know somebody playing, you're on the same server and can go shoot him in the spleen.
The two games have no valid base of comparison, other than being online and subscription based.
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Robert VonBraun
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Posted - 2008.06.02 17:59:00 -
[6]
lag in 0.0 fleet battles is Brutal, but the game wasnt designed to run such huge battles 400 people in one fight is crazy. I have never heard of a single pvp action in any game that can take those kinds of numbers and run unlagged.
As for the slow population growth within Eve. I dont see any link between that and the fact that Eve is a single shard. In fact I believe the slow growth within the Eve universe is do to lack of real marketing. I bought Eve 4 yrs ago, but since then I have never seen copy at any store, nor have I seen any advertising.
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MotherMoon
Huang Yinglong
FOUNDATI0N
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Posted - 2008.06.02 18:06:00 -
[7]
well they just adversited on the SciFi channel
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ToxicFire
Phoenix Knights
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Posted - 2008.06.02 18:07:00 -
[8]
Also if you look at the figures eve's growth has peaked atm theres not been any significant growth or decline in a while. And WOW is in no way EVE's closest peer.
The chinese cluster never grew beyond a couple of thousand.
There is no superior model interms sharding/not sharding
------------------------------------------
Sig removed as it lacks EVE-related content. Mail [email protected] if you have questions. -Hango
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Neermark
JotunHeim Hird
X13 Alliance
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Posted - 2008.06.02 18:09:00 -
[9]
 Originally by: Douglas MacArthur
Looking at some statistics it appears that today we have around 180,000 to 200,000 acounts vis-a-vis beginning where we had ~20,000. That implies CAGR rate (rate at which population should've grown every year on average in order to reach from 20k to ~200k) of 70%. That is relativelly big number, if game would continue growing annualy at the same rate then you coudl in principle deem it a succes.
On the other hand if you look at WOW, we could see a bit different dynamics in there. I don't the official stats per se, but latests numbers show game has somewhat around 8,000,000 players. If we assume (for the sake of the calculation) that player base for wow at the begining was around 20k (same as EVE) then implied CAGR rate would be 350% anually.
Well WOW had a monthly marketing budget, many times bigger than the whole budget Eve Online for a whole year. Eve has actually had a good growth the last couple of years and had a very slow start (with a slight stall with AoC coming out and people being busy before the holidays).
So comparing a game that was (over)hyped with a game, thats grown mainly through word of mouth is pretty hard.
I actually think this game will keep growing as more and more people hear about it. The people who play Eve is also alot older than the average WOW player. So it is two different segments, that are really hard to compare mainly because alot more tweens and teens play WOW and MMO's in general. I'm not sure that Eve will benefit from having that segment growing too big in Eve. (everyone who been near af teenager filled with hormones that you just podded would prolly agree with me  )
Also MMO-players get older they will wanna play a MMO with more depth and a MMO where you actually don't have to be online 24/7 to grind skills.
Also to put some number in this discussion i will link numbers from MMORPG-Charts
Between 70,000-700.000 subs
Above 200k subs
Yay For the new ALIGN BUTTON !!!! |
MotherMoon
Huang Yinglong
FOUNDATI0N
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Posted - 2008.06.02 18:33:00 -
[10]
I believe that final fantasy 11 is hiding the numbers because according to the chart for the past 2 years they haven't moved at all.
Which is bull because that game is really dated.
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Macmuelli
Meltd0wn
Atrum Tempestas Foedus
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Posted - 2008.06.02 19:13:00 -
[11]
Edited by: Macmuelli on 02/06/2008 19:14:38
I m not sure i thought just reading something about 236510 subscribers of eve, which realy surprised me.
I thought they had hit the 300 k mark but...
The biggest adventage of eve is, that we all play in one universe. Something WoW cannot offer.
If this would changed to seperat servers with limited numbers of players, the game would loose his magic. All this politcs and diffrent peoples make this game what is it.
I think they go the right way, and with ambulation they set a foundation stone.
As i read it, if the player leave his capsule and walk around stations in the beginning include a minimal interaction between him and other players, he will not notice that his character will change the server to a seperat one.
Something which can reduce the lag, if all players ( alts) , which doing buisness on stations, are on such a seperate server.
I personal hope, this will be the beginning to bring this game deeper into the Role-Playing-Gameworld with an sifi touch, ad a sucess like mass effect.
They way to introduce such a world inside this game has a great base.
Old racees - and where are they?
Jovians?
Is it possible to combine it with introducing a new technology level ( tech III), and the player can get the requirements via subgames based on the meaning of ambulation. like walking on hidden stations/ asteroids/ Planets and abbandoned ruins?)
Something like this could make it inteesting for peoples which run for items and like building things.
The old community could bring them to such a spot and protect them in what they do.
The limitation of WoW is:
It cannot surprise anymore.
There are Bossmonsters, Unique sets, and bonbongrafic.
In the end u had to kill everything to get such a unique. The core of every expansion looks like the same. Better Grafic, rarer items and 10 more levelelups player can have.
This is something eve can make much better.
First researching for a technolgy , which make it possible let this world grow up to much higher numbers of players.
Then adding a deep science fiction rp- world into it. Which make it possible to let peoples think about if they change to eve, if the scenario around grinding things has a science fiction base, with endless possibiltys away from massmurdering monsters.
And "level ups" are not depended on the numbers of kills, and so easy like now.
It can life a long time.
But it would die if players will be limited in numbers on seperate servers.
my personal minds.
I hear some kittens crys around me so plz keep a smile on my gramma 
breg mac
"Ein jeder ernte Ruhm auf seine Weise.....Gunnar von Hlidarendi "
EVE FAN since 2003
äWode, Wode, hale dinnen Rosse nu voder, nu Diestel un Dorn, Schter jar beter Korn!ô
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Malcanis
R.E.C.O.N.
Insurgency
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Posted - 2008.06.02 19:17:00 -
[12]
Originally by: Douglas MacArthur
This post was meant to be just a thought provocation really, just to make players of eve online and devs think about the future of the game.
In my view the key driver of eve succes as a game, in terms of how much people enjoy playing it and obviously commercial success for the company is the number of subscribers. Looking at some statistics it appears that today we have around 180,000 to 200,000 acounts vis-a-vis beginning where we had ~20,000. That implies CAGR rate (rate at which population should've grown every year on average in order to reach from 20k to ~200k) of 70%. That is relativelly big number, if game would continue growing annualy at the same rate then you coudl in principle deem it a succes.
On the other hand if you look at WOW, we could see a bit different dynamics in there. I don't the official stats per se, but latests numbers show game has somewhat around 8,000,000 players. If we assume (for the sake of the calculation) that player base for wow at the begining was around 20k (same as EVE) then implied CAGR rate would be 350% anually.
I don't mean to draw any parallels between gameplay, merelly just for comparison purposes at WOW appears to be the closesst peer to EVE online.
So what can we learn from those numbers ? At the moment it appears that growth of eve population is somewhat stagnant, which is very disturbing sign to me. In my opinion one of the reasons for this is technical limitations which the game has. Lets take major fleet battles in 0.0, beyond some point the encounter is just not possible because of lags. In addition the fact that chineese cluster of the game was not connected to the european cluster suggests to me that technical limitation may indeed be the case. I'm quite confident that EVE online would get an "injection" of healthy competition from Chineese players the whole community would benefit. We would see more alliances, more aggresive game play and overall more fun. However CCP decided to implement 2 worlds separetely.
That suggests to me, "shard" technology of WOW may indeed be more superior to "single shard" technology. In Economics terms you can look at this process as at "convergence" of less superior model to a more superior and more efficient model.
In my view that is something devs really need to think about.
In terms of gameplay I think EVE does have a unique and very interesting system which is by no means any respect inferior to WOW or any other MMORPG.
What I'm trying to explain here, is that I do not see any reasons apart from technological ones, which stop EVE online from capitalizing on booming internet growth and popularity of MMORPGs.
Any thoughts on this ?
What I would really want to achieve by this is to (again) provoke some thoughts, that may potentially make EVE online much better and BIGGER game in the long term !
More people eat rice than steak, therefore rice is better than steak.
CONCORD provide consequences, not safety; only you can do that. |
MotherMoon
Huang Yinglong
FOUNDATI0N
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Posted - 2008.06.02 19:24:00 -
[13]
WOAH! not to change the topic but I've been to that site before it used to say 2nd life has over 4 million people... but now it's at about 150,000!
IS this for real? where they lying the whole time?
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Kaleff Orlop
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Posted - 2008.06.02 19:37:00 -
[14]
Mainstream = generic imo, your trying to please all of the people all of the time. Ive played MMO's since they were called muds and I much prefer the niche stuff over the wow type stuff. I mean, what mainstream game have you ever played where the evil empire that everyone hated was a player group (Goons, BOB, etc).
The truth is, the server type isn't the biggest reason why eve doesn't have huge growth rates, its that the game isn't formulaic. Theres no role to fit into. You do what you want, and if it makes isk life's good. Players either figure that out or they wander off out of the sandbox.
Besides, if you turned eve into a cluster of limited population servers you would destroy the quite a few things about the game, like the economy.
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Gosh Krux
Clown Punchers.
Clown Punchers Syndicate
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Posted - 2008.06.02 20:35:00 -
[15]
EvE's ruined me. When I play another mmo with shard servers, it drives me up the fricking wall.
Shard servers suck, period.
Sig removed, lacks Eve-related content. If you would like further details please mail [email protected] ~Saint |
Sal Alo
Sebiestor tribe
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Posted - 2008.06.02 21:17:00 -
[16]
Last time I checked, WoW had more than 10,000,000 ACTIVE subscriptions, according to Blizzard.
I agree that WoW growth is slowing down but 10,000,000 is a good point for slowing down :D
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MotherMoon
Huang Yinglong
FOUNDATI0N
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Posted - 2008.06.02 21:20:00 -
[17]
Originally by: Sal Alo
Last time I checked, WoW had more than 10,000,000 ACTIVE subscriptions, according to Blizzard.
I agree that WoW growth is slowing down but 10,000,000 is a good point for slowing down :D
Well at least we know starcraft 2 will have support :P
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Faife
Noctiscion
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Posted - 2008.06.02 21:23:00 -
[18]
i only play eve cause there's no sharding. it makes it feel real. if they shard, i quit.
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Grapez
Sky Net Industries
Pure.
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Posted - 2008.06.02 21:39:00 -
[19]
Originally by: Idiot OP
"shard" technology of WOW may indeed be more superior to "single shard" technology
Sharding "technology" isn't a technology. Sharding is a cop-out.
If you want to play WoW, please do so.
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Munen
Imperial Academy
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Posted - 2008.06.02 21:51:00 -
[20]
This whole post fails because you are comparing games that are too different in their execution of game mechanics.
You are better off comparing Runescape to Eve Online IMO.
Be mindful of your surroundings. |
ToxicFire
Phoenix Knights
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Posted - 2008.06.02 21:58:00 -
[21]
Edited by: ToxicFire on 02/06/2008 21:58:23
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Sig removed as it lacks EVE-related content. Mail [email protected] if you have questions. -Hango
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Glengrant
TOHA Heavy Industries
Brutally Clever Empire
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Posted - 2008.06.02 22:21:00 -
[22]
Is it that day of the week again? When somebody starts yet another annoying let's shard thread?
Eve is already running on many servers- they're just clustered together to support a single gameworld.
That Eve is a single-universe game (chinese cluster is a special case - there are just very many chinese on this planet and hardly anybody else speaks chinese while many chinese don't speak english - CCP was worried that TQ would be dominated by people who the rest of the word couldn't talk to) is one of its biggest selling point.
Shard the Eve universe and the Fanfest following that would be bloody brutal affair with CCP management getting lynched.
In short it's a terrible idea and I would like the next version of this forum to have a filter that puts all messages mentioning shards into a trashbin section where the rest of us don't have to see them all the time.
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ISK BUYER = LOOSER
EVE TV- Bring it back!
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Drizit
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Posted - 2008.06.02 22:22:00 -
[23]
I fear that sharding may have to become a reality since the number willing to quit due to sharding is roughly equivalent or maybe less to those quitting due to lag problems.
It was less than two years ago that CCP upgraded the servers when the old ones were pushing hard to maintain 20K online every day. Now it looks like a further upgrade to maintain >40K. With the price of new servers, CCP can't honestly be expected to fork out millions every year or two to maintain its speed given the massive influx of new users. Eve has been running for 5 years but in less than two, it has more than doubled its number of online players.
I still maintain that a second shard with all players logging into that starting over with new characters will allow newer players to realise their dream of being one of the big alliances in 0.0. As it stands now, new players see 0.0 as a hostile region that they need to steer clear of because too many big alliances have already laid claim to it all. Others can become pirates in lowsec instead of constantly being a victim of them.
Another reason for so many in highsec is that 0.0 is already claimed and lowsec is full of player pirates.
What would also be cool to do on a new server is to break up the current architecture of jump gates, few or no bottlenecks that currently allow large alliances to hold vast areas with one or two gate camps.
Universe: New Venture.
Scenario: A sleeper ship was sent out to a distant beacon 5 years ago. What they found was a second "universe"* populated by Jove and subsequently abandoned. Armed with a number of noob ships and some "prototype"% long range jump clones, they set about creating a new colony. Concord ships were built and existing stations made ready. Concord pilots woken from cryo sleep to maintain order.
*"Universe" designation: A number of systems joined by gates.
%"prototype" = the problem with porting of skills, only the basic skills are kept.
Players can clone jump into New Venture but the target clone holds practically no skills or memory, giving the base 80K or so you would normally start the character with. Players making this leap will do so in the knowledge that there is no return and their skills will have to be started over.
New characters will have to be created on TQ but jumped onto New Venture. Old characters who jump will have to start learning all over again, after which there is no choice of which server you want to play on, the character is now stuck on New Venture.
New ideas to create more interest: There are no factions or faction regions Minmatat, Amarr Caldari etc, these are created by numbers of pilots that enter the New Venture Universe and set up home in their various systems, alliances and corporations create their own faction regions. The NPC's would also jump and create new groups with totally new names.
T1 BPO's brought with the sleeper ship with invention only and no T2 BPO's at all. New and different roids with varying degrees of minerals already known but in different yields to the ones we have now.
So much more can be done to make the new system different in a way that generates interest.
--
Freighters need a tank |
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