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PC Games (Games)

What is The Cost of an Early Release? 133

Posted by Zonk from the easier-to-ask-forgiveness.. dept.
Everguide writes "Sony Online Entertainment recently announced that they would be releasing EverQuest 2 on November 8th, ahead of their main competition World of Warcraft (last predicted release date: Week of November 22). SOE is notorious for launching games with content that is not finished or buggy, and Blizzard is known for at times delaying a game just to work out minor bugs. Is it worth launching a game early, yet buggy, to grab market share from the competition? I know the Themis group thinks a poor launch can cost a company millions of dollars but will the benefit of launching early exceed the costs?"
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What is The Cost of an Early Release? More

What is The Cost of an Early Release?

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  • I can't remember the author... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Oliver Wendell Jones ( 158103 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @01:09PM (#10643798)
    but I found a quote several years back that went something like this...

    A late game is only late until the moment it launches
    A bad game is bad forever.

    Games like Anarchy Online that ended up being decent games, suffered drastically at launch and word got around that the game had issues, wasn't worth trying, etc. and they no doubt lost a lot of potential customers over this.

    Get the game right and then launch. You're always going to have isssues with someone who is using a 4 MB video card or only 64 MB of RAM on their mobo, or some other issue - that's going to happen - don't let the people who bothered to read the minimum requirements and have met them suffer because you wanted to get the game out first.

  • Depends (Score:3, Interesting)

    by the morgawr ( 670303 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @01:11PM (#10643835) Homepage Journal
    My $.02:

    Obviously, having a game out nets you short term cash, and long run you can eventually patch it.

    However, if your company has a reputation for releaseing buggy games, gamers are going to just not buy them for a few patches (to get the bugs worked out) or not buy them at all because they have a limited budget.

    I'm in favor of the wait until the game is finished approach.

  • I think... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It is more of a detriment than a benefit. The bugs invariably create word of mouth downturns for the product. Besides, this is assuming that SOE can even get people to transfer from their more established EQ1 for the harsher strictures imposed for things like dying in EQ2. I see players as more likely to transfer between worlds, as opposed to merely playing the same game with slightly better graphics.

  • Rarely yes, often no (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MMaestro ( 585010 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @01:17PM (#10643914)
    will the benefit of launching early exceed the costs?

    Yes in the case of the Doom 3 vs Half-Life 2 argument. Doom 3 lacked polish when it went beyond single-player which hurt it badly (deathmatch only? fun, but lacks variety). But in anyway you look at it, Doom 3 put a dent in Half-Life 2's fanfare. Fancy graphics and physics? Doom 3 did that, so Half-Life 2 only has storyline and gameplay (arguably the two hardest things to implement in a game).

    No in the case of EA Games's style of releasing buggy games. We KNOW they're pretty much the Microsoft of developing games, we KNOW they have a stranglehold on developers, we KNOW not to play a version 1.0 of any EA game now. In the case of EA Games, they need to stop putting these games out so quickly and just polish them up. We don't need a BF1942/Vietnam clone/sequel/expansion only to have it even more buggy than the previous one.

    • Re:Rarely yes, often no (Score:5, Interesting)

      by fireduck ( 197000 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @01:52PM (#10644429)
      Doom 3 may have gotten the early spotlight, but the real question, is "1 year from now, which game will still be played, and still selling for near full retail price?"

      The fact that at any given time the total number of people playing HL and it's various mods often exceeds the total number of people playing all other FPS games online is amazing. What's absolutely insane is that it's a game that's 5 years old. And it's still taking up retail shelf space and selling for near full value (granted that's a boxed version including various mods, expansions).

      HL2 is shipping with an updated version of the single most popular multiplayer FPS. (while Doom3's is multiplayer is lacking) I'd be surprised if even with it's late start HL2 doesn't sell more total copies than Doom3 by Christmas.

    • Re:Rarely yes, often no (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dirtside ( 91468 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @05:38PM (#10647188) Journal
      Yes in the case of the Doom 3 vs Half-Life 2 argument. Doom 3 lacked polish when it went beyond single-player which hurt it badly (deathmatch only? fun, but lacks variety). But in anyway you look at it, Doom 3 put a dent in Half-Life 2's fanfare.
      This is somewhat tangential, but don't make the mistake of assuming that Doom 3 was "hurt" at all by lacking polish beyond single player. id Software isn't in the business of selling games: they're in the business of selling game engines. They make far more money doing that than they do from selling copies of a game like Doom 3. Don't get me wrong, game sales are a nice side benefit, but essentially Doom 3 (and every id game since Quake) has been released in order to demonstrate the new engine they've created. id then licenses the engine to numerous developers, who wrap their own content around it.
    • Your attach on EA Games is a little unnecessarily caustic. You have a point regarding some titles -- many of the EA Sports titles, and Lionhead's Black and White come to mind. But some, like The Two Towers and Return of the King games, were exceptional and polished.
    • A bit misleading, as Id tried to make it very clear that Doom3's purpose and intention was single player, with multiplayer only being a little side benefit like it was in the original Doom games. Single player games by their very nature do not produce many post-release sales. People play it once or steal it and are done. Add to that the fact that Doom 3 (apparently) does not appeal to a very broad audience. Most of the old Doom players were looking for something more like Doom/Quake (action shooter) and mos

  • I worked for a very wise man once (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MerlynEmrys67 ( 583469 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @01:17PM (#10643921)
    He said.
    A year from now no one will remember that it was a year late.

    A year from now they will remember that it was completely useless - and never buy from you again.

    This was business software so it had a slightly longer lifetime - but the principle still applies - if you have a reputation for bad software - it will follow you forever.

    • And for proof of that quote simply take a look at Fable. Its basically ruined Lion Head studios.

      I was a huge fan of Black and White and Creature Isle (even though they were hugely flawed). So naturally I was excited about their first XBOX game.

      "Fable" was supposed to be a massively complex RPG/Adventure game with a complex social system, hundreds of hours of game play, side quests... etc. The idea was to model a complex society where your interactions with people altered the way the game unfolded.

      W

      • "All I know about Bush is I had a job when Clinton was president."

        I hate bush too but are you seriously expecting empathy when you haven't found a job IN FOUR YEARS? Jesus Christ.
      • "Its basically ruined Lion Head studios."
        How do you figure that?

        Fable has been one of the most successful games ever for Xbox. It netted lionhead a mint. Sure it didnt live up to expectations, but it was hardly a failure, and you could hardly suggest that it was rushed to market, OR that it was buggy.
        • I dont' know about the OP, but here's how *I* figure Fable ruined Lionhead.

          Before I bought Fable, I'd have rushed out to buy anything and everything with Lionhead and/or Peter Molyneaux's name on it. I've been looking forward to Black and White 2, because I've heard about all the way it will beat the pants off Black and White 1, which was an excellent game in it's own right.

          But now that I've played Fable, I'm not going to be so anxious to buy Black and White 2. For Fable, I was willing ot buy the hype, r

          • There's no way in hell I'm buying another Peter Molyneaux game without checking it out first

            how do you figure that this action will "ruin Lionhead"?

            only if they ever release crap games from now on.

            Fable isn't a crap game even, its just not what you thought it would be based on early interviews. It is eminently playable and a fun time to be had doing so.

            Peter is carving his original niche, doing brave games and the gaming world is far better off for him tryin to do so.

            Perhaps he should do :

            "Lionhead
      • I'm not really a gamer, i did love Myst, but the boys seemed to blow through Fable pretty quickly. I might even give it a try as it seemed essentialy beginner-level. Since Fable was the 2nd game i've ever seen on Xbox, I thought the buggy, choppy, video-abortion was the way Xbox was supposed to be. After that I have seen a couple other games running much better.
  • I don't really think it amaters much when dealing with this kind of game. Patches are available anytime, and you never know what patches are needed sometimes until you get the thing started,

  • The Cost is your Reputation (Score:5, Interesting)

    by glowimperial ( 705397 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @01:24PM (#10644044)
    Regarding Sony, specifically, they have lost their reputation as a MMO developer over the SWG fiasco. Jump to Lightspeed is apparently causing all sorts of bugs in the looting tables for the ground game, and people's items have been randomly disappearing since they started patching the code, I hear. The word on the street is that EQ2 is not ready yet either, although not as catastrophically bad as SWG at release. Given that Sony never got the 1 million customer base they predicted for SWG, they are hurting and in need of both market share and operating cash to keep their boats afloat. Tons of players are not going to play EQ2 (which will be a decent game, for its genre), due to their experiences with their other buggy releases. This is going to be a tough holiday season for game developers. A lot of the products they are putting out are extremely well made and very time consuming, I suspect a lot of players may only be able to tackle 2-3 of them until the end of the year. A lot of people will take a "wait and see" attitude on early MMO releases, given that they have a boatload of solid single player console and PC games to keep them busy until the mess sorts itself out. Blizzard can sit on WoW as long as they want. It has massive hype, and is in better shape than any MMO I have ever played, and it is still in Beta. They have a built in base of single player and online gamers waiting for their product, and a mountain of disgruntled MMO players who can bide their time in their less than satifactory worlds, until WoW comes out. Blizzard also drips with credibility regarding their quality control process, an increasingly important asset for anyone in the MMO market.
    • Blizzard can sit on WoW as long as they want.

      They're not, though. They're pushing themselves to release it in November. Recently they posted a rather large list of features that weren't gonna make release (things like hero classes, plus it looks like they are dropping any decent organized PvP) - a bunch of gamebreakers for me. I'm in the beta, but I'm not going to purchase WoW until they make the game massively better, which will probably be several months into 2005.

      Have you played it? It's vaguely fun,
      • I know that they may be giving into market pressure to release early in the holiday season, but I think that they have a pretty solid product, and a development team and attitude that will work well towards improving their product in the long run. I haven't been in the EQ2 Beta, but what I did see in te WoW stress test was pretty promising. I think that they will have a good product, even if they go with the November 22nd launch. I have some of the same PvP concerns, but feel that Blizzard will address t
      • While I think Guild Wars also looks awesome, it's not really a MMO in the same way as EQ or WoW. In practice it works the same way as Diablo II, just with more limitations on how you enter games, and with a big 3D town with stores and the like instead of the chat rooms.

    • Re:The Cost is your Reputation (Score:4, Interesting)

      by photon317 ( 208409 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @02:55PM (#10645214)

      Specifically, Sony is banking on their successes with EQ1 to bring them EQ2 customers. For all of it's flaws (believe me, I ranted and railed about EQ1 plenty), it was still one of the best-designed and successful MMORPGs to date. They still have a healthy population that trounces most other games even after all these years and expansions and competitors.


      What most people don't realize, and what Sony hopes they don't realize until it's too late (e.g. already bought EQ2 retail box, and signed up for a few months, and maybe even got hooked on the shitty game) - is that the guys who built EQ1 are not building EQ2. Your SWG references are pefect, because in terms of development/release/gameplay talent, EQ2 has more in common with SWG than EQ1.


      Designing a really good MMORPG is a very hard thing, and there's a very small pool of talent who can really do it right. They (Verant, Sony) has the right guys doing the right stuff when EQ1 was built. The EQ2 team is not the same guys.


      Incidentally, some of those magically talented guys that brought EQ1 into this world are currently working on a new games at http://www.sigilgames.com [sigilgames.com]



      Their new game is promising, if nothing else because of the guys behind it, but it's considerably behind the schedule of games like WoW and EQ2.

    • Blizzard also drips with credibility regarding their quality control process, an increasingly important asset for anyone in the MMO market.

      I disagree with you there. People often forget about Battle.Net when it comes to Blizzard's portfolio. Battle.net is probably the worst multiplayer community/experience I've ever had (as well as all of my friends). Remember when they had deleted 112,000 Diablo II accounts [slashdot.org] (June 2003) due to hack and cheating programs? They patted themselves on the back in an effort to
      • So it's Blizzard's fault that people break into their games and cheat? I don't think it is. They've limited the number of ways that people can cheat as much as possible while keeping actual gameplay reliable, but until running games all serverside is cheap and everybody has zero-latency net connections, it's not possible. It's equally impossible to tell whether a disconnect is legitimate or not. They get a HUGE number of complaints no matter how they deal with disconnects. Even though the system isn't perfe
        • So it's Blizzard's fault that people break into their games and cheat?

          Yeah. Pretty much. Why make a press release and a big ruckus to announce to the world that you've done a great justice to the community by deleting 112,000 accounts from your service for a game has been out for 3 years?! Only to admit that nearly their ENTIRE lineup of up games for the past 5-6 years are equally as buggy and delete nearly 4 times as many accounts within a 6 month period of time.

          Yes sure it's difficult to figure out if
          • Let's not be petty now. If you have a game that's got all of the server-side code on the client (Diablo II, Warcraft III, Starcraft), of course it's going to be hackable like this. Every single player game in existence has trainers/hacks/whatever. MMOs are a completely different ballgame in that there's a expansive swath of code the players never get to process on their PC let alone attempt to disassemble.

  • As a matter of fact (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Otter ( 3800 )
    You know those "PHBs", "marketdroids" and the rest of the nontechs you guys are always ridiculing? Well, that's why their jobs exist -- because there's no one answer to questions like this and making the right call is vitally important.

  • i'm in the beta (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Naikrovek ( 667 ) <jjohnson@pWELTYsg.com minus author> on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @01:31PM (#10644146)
    along with the other tens of thousands of folks that are in beta.

    it seems that the consensus among the beta testers is that the game is ready. there are no major known bugs that i've ever come across, and there are very few glitches to speak of. there are a few lag issues in key zones, but they've taken care of that in a way that i'm happy with.

    the bad rep that SOE got was from SWG, and it was deserved in that case. that game still isn't ready for production, mainly because they're still altering the game design on a monthly basis. if they would just stop changing things they'd be doing okay.

    Everquest 2 is a very good game, imho. I never played Everquest but I know that I like and enjoy EQ2 a lot.

    in my opinion it is ready now. in 10 days when it is released, it will even be more ready. they're literally working 24/7 to get everything fixed before the release that they can, and i'm certain that you can expect a not-insignificant patch the first time you launch the client.

    this is my honest opinion. I play it every day and I enjoy it every day. There are no showstopping bugs that I've come across and very few that I know about. Those are higher-level things and they'll have those fixed by the time anyone gets up to that level i'm sure.

    so yeah i'm cool with the game as it is now.

    and fyi, the game is huuuge. the lands are huge. the vocally active (read: speaking, as in you hear them) NPCs really add a lot more than I thought they would. the scenery is grand. on my pc (which is kinda wimpy -athlon 3000 @ 2.1ghz, 1.5gb ram, ati radeon 9800 pro 128mb) it runs at about 30fps, at 1600x1200, running at the setting just above "balanced." I forget what that setting is called now, but that's where I'm running. I have also turned on a few things like specular highlighting that aren't turned on in that performance profile.

    the heroic opportunities are fun, and there are somewhat subtle visual clues, telling you what you need to do to continue the chain. the end of the chain is usually a "devastating blow" to your opponent, or sometimes it is a buff or a heal to yourself. so its not just a "double-click the enemy and wait until one of you dies" which is how I find a lot of mmorpg games. Meaning that if you want to fight anything above your own level you have to think about what you're doing before you even begin to engage the enemy. that's a kind of challenge that i enjoy in a game like this.

    Everquest 2 is fun. I'll be buying it on release day and I'll be playing it that night. And I'll have a lot of fun doing it.

    YOUR mileage may vary.

    • Re:i'm in the beta (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Lowtekium ( 216265 )
      the bad rep that SOE got was from SWG

      No the bad rep that SOE was from Everquest, back when they were known as Verant. Remember if you claimed that your account was hacked, they just deleted your account? They had a bad reputation to begin with, SWG just added to that weight.
    • I agree Naikrovek. I just got into beta a few days ago, and I hold the same opinion. No major bugs. Personally, I really enjoy the game design. I think the archetype/class/subclass system is nice. The content seems ample (I can't speak for mid-high level content yet, though), as I've done nothing but quests up to level 10 already.

      Then you have tons of posts on the EQ2 related item yesterday saying how this game is like 6 months away from release. Of course, no one ever says WHY. I wish they would, because

    • Sounds unpolished (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MMaestro ( 585010 )
      I've been in beta tests before, and its very easy to tell if a person either goes around just playing in the beta for fun, of if hes trying to find bugs, break the game, and then reporting it.

      there are a few lag issues in key zones, but they've taken care of that in a way that i'm happy with.

      In a beta, if YOU the beta tester experience a 'few' lag issues, upon release the THOUSANDS of users will take lag issues like a bulldozer to a sand castle. Less than 20 people? Pfft, try 2000 people suddenly entering

      • In a beta, if YOU the beta tester experience a 'few' lag issues, upon release the THOUSANDS of users will take lag issues like a bulldozer to a sand castle. Less than 20 people? Pfft, try 2000 people suddenly entering the area to see whats new.

        I have been involved in several MMO betas, along with several non-MMO betas and this particular comment really makes me wonder. People always seem to forget that when games are in beta, the servers are typically running debug versions of the software. Thus the ga

        • People always seem to forget that when games are in beta, the servers are typically running debug versions of the software. Thus the game is going to be much more laggy and slow than it will be when it is running optimized (release) code. MMO's are not some sort of ground-breaking network technology, they don't have to invent new ways to handle the traffic.

          You're not thinking on the macro level. Tell me this, if the game is laggy for you and your beta friends, how laggy do you think its gonna get when you

          • Tell me this, if the game is laggy for you and your beta friends, how laggy do you think its gonna get when you throw in a couple extra hundred users? You can't justify a problem that exists with a 200 person test with an 'optimized' version with 2,000 people.

            You've made the same point again. :) The beta is running debug code, which causes more overhead on the server, which induces lag into the client. Let's be clear here and say that lag is a slang word that is typically defined as slowdowns experienc

        • Can you tell me where you found that price?

          Check pricewatch [pricewatch.com].

          Just be careful which vendors you choose.
    • it seems that the consensus among the beta testers is that the game is ready. there are no major known bugs that i've ever come across, and there are very few glitches to speak of. [...]

      the bad rep that SOE got was from SWG, and it was deserved in that case. that game still isn't ready for production [...]

      And to me, that's the important distinction. If you wait until your grand vision is done, it never will be. I think the optimum is to get something minimal but solid out ASAP, and then let your future d

    • the bad rep that SOE got was from SWG, and it was deserved in that case. that game still isn't ready for production, mainly because they're still altering the game design on a monthly basis. if they would just stop changing things they'd be doing okay.

      They did *exactly* the same thing with EQ; and I bet they do exactly the same thing with EQ2.

      Everquest 2 is a very good game, imho. I never played Everquest but I know that I like and enjoy EQ2 a lot.

      I thoroughly enjoyed EQ when I first started play

  • Ther blerb neglected Sony's original suck ass expansion Shadows of Luclin. Not only were 3/4 of the features listed on the box incomplete, but much touted the graphics engine brough most PCs to their knees. The load times to travel between zones went from seconds to minutes and frequently resulted in a game crash.

    It took them nearly a year to fix the most severe problems, and to this day much of the content introduced in the game remains incomplete.

  • Early release in a saturated market (Score:5, Informative)

    by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @01:34PM (#10644190)
    Unfortunately for SOE, the market for fantasy-based MMOGs is all but saturated currently. The companies making these games are squabbling over each others' former customers to a large degree. Because of the significant cash outlay associated with these games, most players don't maintain more than one or two accounts total (and frequently, those accounts are for the same game, and are used to multibox).

    What's more is that MMOGs are unplayable if you don't pay, and the result is that the $50 initial payment for the box game seems like wasted cash if the player decides the game isn't worth it. In this case, the better the beta experience, the better the sales, and from the various reports I've heard, Blizzard has that contest won hands-down.

    WoW open beta will also likely begin before EQ2 goes live, and "free" will most definitely distract people from rushing out and buying SOE's latest offering, right up to the point where WoW goes live. An ingenious marketing tactic on Blizzard's part, if they don't drop the ball.

    • Of course, if any other company tried that (give away their product for free to get people hooked on it, then tell everyone to buy a subscription), Slashdot would be screaming bloody murder.
      • What are you talking about? I've seen tons of open betas before... most notibly (for MMORPG discussions) is Guild Wars. They had an E3 for everyone event earlier in the year, and have another coming up if I remember correctly.
    • Unfortunately for SOE, the market for fantasy-based MMOGs is all but saturated currently. The companies making these games are squabbling over each others' former customers to a large degree.

      This is where Blizzard's reputation for well-executed, polished games (or more to the point, their massive, dedicated fan base) is going to help a ton. SOE may be targeting their current and past customers, but Blizzard's got a whole base of MMOG virgins that'll give WoW a try because they loved Craft and Diablo.

      (Ad
  • Why is it a bad move in this case for EQ2 to realase early?

    If the game is at all buggy and people get frustrated with it, WoW will have 1 superfantastic launch.

    I believe people in general are getting tired of "testing" early released MMO and having to pay for them. WoW may be the bar that other companies need to set in order to deliver a MMO to market.

  • EQ (Score:2)

    by Aggrazel ( 13616 )
    EQ sucked its first month of release. The servers were down so much they gave everyone an extra free month. That being said it turned out to be the most successful MMORPG in America, despite a rocky launch, many think mainly because it was first.

    Today however, there's a different climate. This is arguably the third generation of 3d MMORPGs. A buggy release won't cut it. That being said I have no idea of the quality of EQ2, it may very well be ready. I gave up playing MMORPGs when I signed off of DAoC last

  • I think it's a good idea for SOE (Score:3, Interesting)

    by vhold ( 175219 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @01:36PM (#10644222)
    There are a few things that I think make this decision logical (enough) for SOE.

    1) Huge Everquest installed base. As a whole, they've probably been marginally following WoW, but they are naturally going to be very aware of EQ2. If WoW were to come out first and start getting acclaim and siphoning users off of EQ before EQ2 had a chance to do the same, a lot of people who are currently only kinda aware of WoW would suddenly be -very- aware. By beating WoW to market, they get all the early natural transition people.

    2) Long term hook associated with MMORPGs, changes the rules a bit. Unless EQ2 is also a massively sucking game, a lot of people are simply going to get hooked as long as it's at least somewhat better then EQ. Once hooked you don't really care so much if there is a better game, because all the stuff you've built up is there, so whatever is released first is going to have a long term advantage as a result. (.. obviously a problem EQ2 is going to have against itself?? I don't know how they are dealing with that )

    3) Blizzard has the weird advantage that it seems like, at least from my perspective, that every gamer knows a few WoW beta testers. They are already totally hooked and play it basically as if it were a released game. There is this huge existing sentiment that EQ2 is going to suck relative to WoW no matter what, so what difference does it make if they wait to make it better?

    • EQ2's target market, as stated by Sony, is People who tried EQ1, and left.

      It's a different game.
      • " EQ2's target market, as stated by Sony, is People who tried EQ1, and left."

        Haha! Yes, people who try a game and don't like it, always buy the sequel!! Haha!

        Not to mention, most of the people that leave EQ, leave because it steals their fricking life away. EQ2 will probably be no different, or else it's not worth the subscription price.
    • Many of the established EQ1 players are now just playing because they've invested so much time in their characters. The last few expansions have been horrible (the Gates of Discord one was bad enough to break my addiction; I'd been playing for over 2 years) and SOE really don't have as much goodwill from their customers as you suggest.

      What I've noticed with my old EQ guild is that most people are far more aware of what's happening in WoW, partly because of friends with beta accounts, partly because we've
    • 3) Blizzard has the weird advantage that it seems like, at least from my perspective, that every gamer knows a few WoW beta testers. They are already totally hooked and play it basically as if it were a released game. There is this huge existing sentiment that EQ2 is going to suck relative to WoW no matter what, so what difference does it make if they wait to make it better?

      I'm a tester for both, and I have 2 strong biases:

      • I love Blizzard
      • I hated EQ

      Those having been stated, I was extremely surpris

  • In all fairness to SOE (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Rallion ( 711805 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @01:40PM (#10644262) Journal
    I'm an absolutely rabid Blizzard fan, and yes, they usually delay the hell out of games, and I like it. But this is an exception to that rule.

    WoW is most definitely not going to release at a 'finished' state, at least not by the conceptions of the developers. This list of things they plan to add in patches is fairly massive, and is growing as things that they wanted to include simply get pushed back by more important things.

    That said, it seems to me that they're under quite a bit of pressure from Vivendi right now...I wonder if Blizzard has a say at all. Still, from what I've heard (mostly from biased people, I freely admit) WoW is more polished than EQ2 anyway.

    • Still, from what I've heard (mostly from biased people, I freely admit) WoW is more polished than EQ2 anyway.

      I've been playing WoW beta for about five months now. It's a great game, lots of fun; my favorite way of describing it is, "WoW is like EQ with all the stupid shit taken out." (And lots of cool stuff added.) EQ2, though, I knew nothing about until last weekend, when I was over at a friend's house. He showed me EQ2 and let me play around with it a little bit.

      Before I describe what it was lik

  • I suspect the main factors in whether this turns out to be a good move for SOE will be:
    1. Is the hardware required to play their pretty game mainstream enough?
    2. Will the game experience be "good enough" to retain users?
    I'll leave to the active MMORPGers to say if Sony has judged these factors correctly.

  • Marketing, Not Quality (Score:3, Interesting)

    by EngineeringMarvel ( 783720 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @01:52PM (#10644422)
    An early release is all about marketing and not so much about the state of the game. SOE made a choice to release their game earlier than expected in order to take sales away from Blizzard and into their pocket. SOE believes that EQ2 is in a good enough shape to have an early release.

    To me the answer relies on the company's reputation. If I know a game is being released early, I will buy it on the earlier release date only if I have confidence in the software company. This all relies on previous experiences I have had with other game titles they have published. In the case of SOE, I would suggest staying away from EQ2 because of my experience with SWG. Another example is EA/DICE. They have released buggy games and up until recently, the early releases weren't a problem until Battlefield: Vietnam. After BFV, DICE's reputation dropped dramatically due to the intense game play inbalances in the game that had not been worked out. Next DICE game I buy now will not be until several months after the game release instead of the day of the release as I did with BF1942, Road To Rome, and Vietnam.

    If a game, upon release, is fun to play with just a few issues, then the early release will be good for the company. If the game has just one major issue, word will get around, and the company's reputation will suffer and then consumers are much less likely to buy a game without hearing about it first (thus hurting sales). It's a big risk to have an early release, but if the company is good, it's a risk worth taking for them. It's all about management making a wise decision on how to market their product. We all know that game producers have made some pretty bad moves latetly, maybe EQ2 will be different.
  • There is a third game that should be included in this discussion and that is Lineage 2. It is a MMORPG produced by NCSOFT (another story about them today) and is based on the Unreal engine. Pushed out almost 6 months before EQ2 or WOW it was all kinds of buggy. Memory leaks, people falling though the world, or its occasionally taking up any and every resource it can find. The game itself is full of bugs and in game errors. There are places where you can get stuck and cannot move. You can still breathe
    • My question to you: If you're going to tout NCSoft, why not tout their GOOD MMOG (City of Heroes) instead of the one that's been a mess (Lineage)?
  • it's an apples and oranges comparison. WoW and EQ2 are very different games that will find very different audiences. Thier similarities start and stop with the MMOG acronym.

    If you really like WoW you will hate EQ2 and if you like EQ2 you will hate WoW.

    But that said MMOGs are different from normal games in regards to how much crap a player will put with in theri game of choice. As horrible as it is Anarchy Online still has players who have been playing since launch day. People started and stuck with r

    • If you really like WoW you will hate EQ2 and if you like EQ2 you will hate WoW.

      This is not a hard-and-fast rule as one of my friends who is a rabid EQ player loved the WoW beta, and is probably going to buy EQ2 as well...

  • I'd like to see the industry place more emphasis on what happens over product's lifetime than on its initial launch.

    As a former developer of Palm entertainment software [dejobaan.com], and current developer of Windows software [dejobaan.com], my perception is that the PDA market encouraged post-release support, whereas the desktop market strongly focuses on the initial "bang." The juciest press in desktop gaming are the previews and the initial review, (and in some cases, games are reviewed before they're released [aaltonen.us]). By comparison, lit
    • For a large company, at least, your preference is achievable, and profitable. Blizzard does this. They know that the most important thing for sales of a game is initial release, yes. That's quite obvious.

      Still, a huge part of what creates fan loyalty, and hence increased sales for the next game, is their incredible post-release record. They patch bugs like no one else. They release expansion packs that revitalize their games, but are by no means mandatory to continue enjoying them. In the cases of StarCraf

  • WoW's release date is not official! (Score:3, Informative)

    by antdude ( 79039 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @02:38PM (#10644988) Homepage Journal
    See Blue's News [bluesnews.com] (direct link [worldofwarcraft.com] to Blizzard's forum thread). Don't trust anyone's words on release dates except Blizzard's.

  • Depends on how bad the bugs are (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @02:40PM (#10645015) Homepage
    Releases should be timed by the percent completion and bug status, not any fixed date. The date is a target for measuring your development processes and budgets. For example: Black and White was released late, but it had some bugs that actually made it impossible to beat the game! DOH! It should have been released even later rather than make it borderline unplayable.

    No software is ever released with an empty list of bugs. There are always bugs. But will they affect major portions of the software? If no, then ship it. If so, then don't ship it. The hard part is determining what bugs are important and what bugs are not.

  • Take a look at City of Heroes (Score:5, Informative)

    by Nick of NSTime ( 597712 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @03:01PM (#10645303)
    CoH had a very successful launch this past April. In July, they rolled out a major (and free) update that added new features. Then in September, they rolled out another huge (and free) update that added capes, new villains, new mission types, and a whole bunch more.

    It seems like Cryptic looked at the previous MMORPGs and learned from other's mistakes, as CoH has been a pretty solid product since day one. Despite a few bugs here and there (and some major complaints from users about game difficulty after Issue 2 went live), the play experience is consistently pleasurable.

    All this is to say that, if an upstart like Cryptic can release a quality product, then why not Blizzard and SoE, both of which have experience with this sort of thing? Maybe Cryptic had beginner's luck, or maybe I'm giving them more credit than they deserve.

    • One of the smart things CoH did was not over-promise. The game at launch provided a polished core gameplay, and they have added more and more fatures later.
      Contrast this with SWG that had crafting, housing, mining, pets, wide variety of character classes... and most everything was broken at launch.
    • I started playing CoH about a month ago and it's a friggin' blast. Over the first two weeks, I played through the first 10 levels of five different characters and kept going back to the same places because it was just plain old fun. This afternoon, I died (or was rendered unconscious, if you prefer) several times in a mission and didn't mind because the mission itself revealed some gameplay elements I hadn't seen so far (a month in) and the battling is fun.

      The reason CoH works, I think, is because they

  • I know that Everquest has a stigma associated with it such that it is likely to suck the life out from you.

    I also know that SOE has had some pretty rough launches in the past.

    On the other hand, I know that every game that Blizzard has made in the last ten years has been excellent and beyond.

    I also know that battle.net is rock solid and can handle the stress.

    Bottom line, if I buy one MMO game this year it will be WoW.

    If I was an MMO player beforehand though, I would most likely end up buying both games.

  • What is the cost of an early release? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Muad'Dave ( 255648 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @04:02PM (#10646124) Homepage

    What is the cost of an early release?

    The respect of your girlfriend?

  • That's easy! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Just Some Guy ( 3352 ) <kirk+slashdot@strauser.com> on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @04:08PM (#10646175) Homepage Journal
    $200 at the local massage parlor, plus tip.
  • "Star Wars Galaxies: Jump to Lightspeed Launches"

    I'm not buying that. Here's the cost of your early SWG release, SOE.
  • It doesn't cost them. They just don't sell like they anticipated to sell.

  • wow not quite ready either (Score:3, Informative)

    by truffle ( 37924 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @05:37PM (#10647182) Homepage
    I alpha (pre-beta) tested both eq2 and wow

    Without a doubt wow is the more polished game, however it is not really ready. More explicitly, class balance, PVP, class talents, racial abilities, and more are incomplete.

    While many people will say "MMOs are never complete" those of us playing WOW every day know that the game feels like it needs 1-2 more months and then it truly would be done.

    Releasing Nov 22nd is a business decision, and it's probably the right one, but WOW isn't truly done.

    I think both Everquest 2 and WOW have a great chance at success. The reason is that while EQ2 is far far far less polished than WOW, EQ2 gameplay appeals more to hard core gamers, the kind who obsessed over Everquest 1 and played the game for 3+ years.

    Currently there is a lot of debate over WOW's ability to retain players for more than one year. The game is very easy, and the basic concern is that because it's so easy the player base won't be able to handle difficult challenges, Blizzard's content production team won't be able to keep up, and people will become bored and move on to other games.

    People talk extensively about how much they hate the grind of EQ2, but it may be the case that grind is the secret ingredient to EQ2's long term success. After all, Sony doesn't need to be popular, they just need to get $15/month from as many people as possible.
  • Ultima Online: I missed out on the UO launch because I was a hardware whore who couldn't justify spending (OMG!) a monthly fee. I did get a week long trial at one point, and it was interesting but by then I'd heard of Everquest and was drooling at the mouth.

    Everquest: Wow! Check out these locations! The gnomish cities, the dwarven statues, the elven city in the trees! But where are all the features they talked about. Smart mobs that call for help or circle around to flank you? Seems like a few reporters
    • The problem with DaOC and realm vs realm play is that you are required to two or three box running it so that you can have buff bots. You play some classes and people come up to you and ask who your main character is.
      If you don't have that second character to buff you RvR will be quickly over.

  • WoW is being rushed, too (Score:3, Interesting)

    by feed_those_kitties ( 606289 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @06:33PM (#10647737)
    But not by Blizzard. Blizzard still has the "we're not going to release a game until it's ready" mentality. But, Vivendi (Blizzard's parent company) is of the "damnit! We need money NOW!" mentality.

    Thus, World of Warcraft will be released earlier than Blizzard prefers.

    Not to worry, though - it will still be n times more polished and stable and fun than almost any other online game.

    I've had the chance to play some WoW beta. I can tell you it will definitely be the first online game I'll buy, and will probably be the only one I buy for a good long while.

    (Although, "City of Heroes" looks like a lot of fun, too!!)

  • WoW Will Win (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Pugio ( 816116 )
    I have been a fan of Blizzard games since Warcraft I. I have also played a number of MMO's as well as had a friend who had a major Everquest addiction. Based on all of this I would say the following:

    WoW will win. If EQ2 worked well without any issues then yes, an earlier release date would greatly benefit them. However, I seriously doubt that EQ2 will be bug free while Blizzard has an impeccable reputation in that regard.

    With that being said, WoW has (already) an extremely loyal following who will glad

  • Let's see, do I trust SOE, with a LONG history of bad customer service, poor implementation, last minute design work, and a penchant to destroy what players like most about their games in order to fit their widely known about yet unknown "visions" or do I trust the Themis group with a history of being able to clean up some asshats mistake with ungodly efficiency.

    Themis group studies this shit for a LIVING, you think SOE knows more than the Themis group and I'll get the "SOE Fanboi" cattle prod out for yo
  • This is a problem fundamental to marketing folks looking at video games. These guys in suits think "Market Share" and visualize getting a bigger slice of a limited pie. Releasing earlier gets you a bigger slice of the pie so it must be a good thing.

    The truth is that the market for games is not anywhere close to reaching the limits of the pie-tin. The hope of an early release is you'll steal the thunder from the competition, which is actually true. The competition loses business when you release a produ
  • My absolute favourite MMO game "Shattered Galaxy [sgalaxy.com]" Followed this approach. An open beta while the game was being polished. They got an huge playerbase doing that and most of them went pay after release. People don't expect perfect games in beta and you can build a playerbase. Shattered Galaxy is hands down the best MMO rpg/rts you can play. In no small part because of the community and the smooth gameplay. They took their time and polished the game all the while using the beta to build a base of players.
  • From my point of view, you should be praying for a late release. My last early release produced a son.

    Seriously though, it's cold in Montana.
  • Why would anyone buy a game on day one. I've always preferred to wait about a month or more. That way I can let others try the game, make comments, and submit bug reprts. Unless a game is getting rave reviews within week one, it's not likely I'll grab it until a few months after. I don't think that I'm in the minority of gamers here.

    Releasing a game early is fine. Releasing a game prematurely (as in, not properly tested) ensure that the extra time between $now and $proper_release_date gives lots of people

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