MMZOMG’s MMO Predictions For 2010!

Well, 2009 was a huge year for mmo’s but not quite in the way that many anticipated. Some AAA titles that were expected to do well are now struggling and a couple of mmo’s were shut down. (The Matrix Online and Table Rasa.) Moving into the New Year we are starting to see an interesting and welcome trend away from the old EQ leveling model to a skill point system. (More like UO.) In my opinion, too many games were trying to duplicate WOW’s success instead of trying to provide people with unique mmo’s that could capture its player’s attention. The strength in the mmo market will come from product diversity rather than selling the same game over and over again in different packaging.

In 2010 we’re going to see the rise of the niche mmo’s, plus a trend towards more involved and hardcore mmo experiences. A lot of gamers first got into mmo gaming with WOW and have grown quite sick of it. (Which is natural after playing one game for such a long period of time.) With other titles like Warrhammer and Conan failing to capture a significant share of WOW’s population it’s become apparent to many developers (but apparently not all of them unfortunately) that smaller titles targeting specific audiences instead of the entire mmo market all at once is the way to go.

Also the large mmo companies are going to push DLC plus subscription models on their customers. Cheep FTP import mmo’s are going to go the way of the dinosaur with the advent of high quality FTP games that don’t completely suck. Anyway, bellow are my predictions on some of the most popular mmo’s for 2010 based upon industry trends which I’ve observed, logic and a bit of good old fashioned speculation.

World of Warcraft – Cataclysm will launch with much fanfare and rejoicing as expected. Returning players will enjoy the first few months of leveling up their old and perhaps new characters in the revamped vanilla zones. That is until they realize that at the end of the day it’s still WOW and the whole point of the game is to grind for the next set of gear. It’s interesting that they are adding in some alternate means of character advancement with the xpac and I see a lot of MMO’s going that route this year as they move away from the EQ “grind to level 9000” mentality.

Age of Conan – When Rise of The Godslayer hits there will be a surge of renewed interest in AOC, and it’ll get excellent reviews. I think they have a great game director at the moment and I like what he’s doing with the alternate character advancement and the different factions in the expansion. AOC and Funcom will get a nice little boost in profits and population, but the game will never come close to achieving the level of popularity many thought it was going to have pre-launch.

Warhammer Online – The game will desperately hold on until the end of the year before EA will either cancel it or stop updating the game, effectively putting it on life support. However, if they take a page from DDO’s book and move to a FTP model the game will see a huge resurgence and it’ll actually become quite profitable. In fact I see FTP models mimicking Dungeons and Dragons online’s current one becoming the fate of old AAA titles rather than outright cancelling them from now on.

Dark Age of Camelot – Mythic consolidated all the servers into one mega server this year which was a smart decision I think. The only big updates DAOC will see is a huge RVR revamp that makes it closer to the old frontiers which people have fond memories of. I still see a slow bleed of players from the game like any aging mmo but I think that by consolidating resources and updating RVR the game will make it through the year.

Ultima Online – Ultima Online is still around due to its extremely loyal player base. They recently released an expansion which I’ve heard good things about that will hopefully provide enough content to keep people busy for a little bit longer. I think UO will still be around for a while, but with sandbox type games making a comeback I could see them losing a lot of subscribers to these more modern mmo’s. Where the hell is UO2?

EverQuest 1 – This game will never die, but Underfoot is most likely the last real expansion that will be released for it. Some of the population will bleed off over time which is normal, but the hardcore EQ fans will stick around thanks to the progression servers.

EverQuest 2 – SOE’s flagship game, EQ2, is actually having a bit of work done to the game engine at the moment which tells me that it’s going to be around for a while yet. I don’t see it going anywhere and it’ll maintain a good, steady population with large quarterly content releases plus further expansions. However, the micro transactions in the game are going to get more and more ridicules until they push the games player’s too far, causing cancelled subscriptions and more well-earned criticism of SOE’s business practices.

EverQuest 3 - It will be announced by the end of the year. ZOMG! I think it will be darker and more mature then EQ2, but that’s just me being optimistic.

Vanguard – Sadly, my favorite PVE mmo is going to be cancelled by the end of the year as SOE makes way for its newer games. I’d love to see at least some FTP version of it, but I don’t think that Sony would be interested in spending the money on development. /sadface

Star Wars Galaxies – SWG will loose at least two thirds of its population when Bioware releases The Old Republic, although some who miss the sand box might come back. Then it will die a slow death until Sony pulls the plug and puts that poor, abused game out of its misery. Micro transactions might save it, and since Star Wars is such a high profile IP I could see Sony putting some extra capital and effort to keep it afloat. If the Old Republic ends up not having enough RPG/Roleplay elements then SWG has a good chance of hanging around for even longer.

Global Agenda – Is an online team shooter with some RPG elements and not an MMO. Just saying.

Darkfall – Aventurine has recovered from a very rough launch and the game will continue to improve this year. Interest will continue to grow and it will be a great indie success, being recognized as the best sandbox and best pvp mmo on the market. That might seem surprising to some, but just you wait. Full disclosure – Darkfall is my favorite mmo at the moment.

Mortal Online – Will be released with many problems much like Darkfall was and there will be a lot of pissed of people who had unrealistic expatiations. Some fans will get frustrated and either go back to Darkfall or latch on to the “new big thing”, whatever than may be. Given time the game will see improvement but I’m concerned over whether or not the Dev team can get the patches out fast enough to retain players. I like the Mortal Dev team, I believe in their vision for the game and I want to see them succeed, I just have a bad feeling about the current status of the game. Of all my predictions, I hope this one is wrong the most.

Dawntide – Another interesting looking sandbox mmo, Dawntide is still in early development and at this point it’s hard to judge how things are going to turn out. If they can keep their funding up it could be the next Ultima Online, not necessarily in popularity but from an open world/game play perspective. This is another game I really want to make it, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

38 Studios – We’ll finally discover what they hell they are working on. They’ve done a great job keeping it secret and I’m guessing that it’s going to be a mature, hardcore fantasy mmo to take the place of the original EQ and Vanguard. Really though; I have no flipping idea.

City of Hero’s/Villains – The Going Rogue expansion will prove popular with current subscribers and it will bring a lot of old players out of retirement. If they can make more endgame content and make more interesting and varied missions I see COX continuing to be profitable for NCSoft.

Aion – Will continue to lose its population until things level out and they have a dedicated fan base that will stick with the game and keep it profitable throughout the year. However, I really don’t see too many people re-subscribing to this game once they have left.

Champions Online – Will continue to lose population until they are only left with a hardcore user base. COX’s Going Rogue Expansion will really hurt Champions, but Champions will release a huge update around that time adding player villains to the game. However, it will not be like City of Villains but instead a large quest series for endgame characters to convert to the dark side. Still, COX will do everything better Champions.

Star Trek Online – Will release to poor reviews and a very disappointed fan base. The fact that many people were turned off by Cryptic’s Champions Online will not help matters for the company. It’s going to be a particularly rough release and it will be highly criticized for being pushed out too soon.

Pirates of the Burning Sea - Even with a large content update in the works I’m concerned that POTBS is on a slow journey towards closure, although I think it’ll make it though the year. The thing that’ll help keep it afloat is the fact that there really isn’t any other game out there, (except a couple of FTP games) that take place in the same setting.

Allods Online – Will set the new standard for FTP MMO’s and will enjoy excellent business. Once it proves to be profitable we can expect to see some more AAA FTP games coming out, but I think rather than putting new titles into production the major mmo companies will instead try converting their struggling games from subscription to micro-transaction models.

Star Wars the Old Republic – This game is obviously going to be huge. Even with all EA and Bioware’s planning the launch will still be a little rocky due to server issues but I don’t foresee any major problems that other high profile MMO’s wouldn’t normally experience. I am a little concerned that the more hardcore gamers will be disappointed that there aren’t enough group activities to do, but we’ll see.

Eve Online – The biggest indie success in the world of MMO’s, Eve will continue to grow and will experience a significant population increase when the implement the Space Station Ambulation expansion. I’m still not sure how I feel about the Dust console addition to the game so I’m not going to comment on that.

World of Darkness MMO – It will finally be announced officially with screen shots, concept art and so on. Since they are working so close with White Wolf I’m thinking that this is going to be an RP’ers dream game. With the annoying Twilight saga being so popular now plus the fact that the game will be heavy on he socialization aspect it will attract a larger than normal female population for a mmo.

Fallen Earth – A sleeper hit, Fallen Earth is doing well for itself and I only see it getting better. It appears to have an excellent development staff and I see some big gains for this one over the course of the year.

Ok, so I’m sure there’s plenty of games that I missed but this damn list is long enough already. If I failed to include your favorite mmo or if you didn’t like my predictions that’s ok. They are just predictions and nothing more. It’ll be fun to check back in on these later in the year to see how wrong I was!

/cackle

Pete