What happens when mythic stops daoc

[Chronictank]

Im just curious to know what would goa do if mythic decides daoc has reached its end in the states? goa get the liscence to do what they please? or do the euro servers get terminated too?

 

[Archeon]

Interesting thought, i'd assume (if they had the playerbase to justify it) GOA would try and buy the rights to DAoC and continue to develop and patch it for themselves...

At which point it would become a glorious utopia of balance and fairplay... Then Mythic would find some obscure clause in the small print of the sales contract and sue GOA out of spite

 

[Fana]

I imagine it will continoue to run here until they arent making enough money off it to warrant keeping any servers open. No new patches, expansions etc, and with ever diminishing support.

My guess is daoc will get one more retail expansion next year, then Mythic will direct all resources towards Imperator, and daoc will start to die down. The game will likely stop getting patches and active support in say 3 years, and the servers start getting merged/closed at that time. Last servers probably close in ~5 years.

 

[Flimgoblin]

UO is still running

Mythic are expanding into new territories - korea/japan/spain/italy.

They're not about to stop developing DAOC.

The Imperator doomsayers are missing the point that Imperator is an entirely different game with a different market - how many people that think "ooh cool, keeps and realm battles, norse/celt/briton mythology and king arthur and his knights!" are going to go "ooh romans in space - that's my thing".

I'm sure some will try it but it's a different niche.

 

[Fana]

Ofc Flim, but it cant go on forever

 

[Flimgoblin]

Ofc Flim, but it cant go on forever

indeed but I don't think it's going to keel over and die any time soon

I imagine that even if the US servers suddenly had all their population eaten by the bugblatter beast of traal Mythic would still develop if they had european subscribers. Be stupid not to

 

[Nine]

I guess as the server pops decline they will close some down and provide transfers (with extra character slots on the target servers).
Then it will reach a critical mass where the pops are so low people won't play any more.

I don't think they need that many people subscribed to tick over a profit.
I mean I was on Asheron2 for ages and sometimes the server pop was just me, the cat and a tin of baked beans.
And its still going.

There is a slow trickle of new players coming to daoc from what I see though (myself included) so I think (hope) there's a lot of life left in it yet.

 

[haarewin]

"ooh romans in space - that's my thing".

hahaha

 

[Morchaoron]

Mythic is currently working on another mmorpg, wouldnt be too suprised if they 'stop' working on daoc just before they release it, especially now daoc has become (or is becoming) a game for a quite limited audience...

btw flim, daoc has become more then a game of norse/celts/knight battles, it has become extremely complex and rvr is more of a big math where a bunch of exotic animals fight each other then a 'real' fight ;o

 

[Sarnat]

Ehh... DAoC is no where near it's death. Imperator has it's very own development team, Mythic has the resources to keep developing two games at the same time, trust me.

 

[old.Whoodoo]

Mythic have already stated that Imperator is not to be compared to Imperator, the latter in fact (so they have said so far) is more like WoW for its PvE content and little PvP, other than the gladatiral arenas.

Judging by UO and AC, DAoC will keep going just as they have, Mythic would be foolish in a busniess sense to try and dismantle it in anyway. However, depening on their contracts, copyright and so on, give it a couple of years and maybe it will go opensource or franchise, in which case the game hosts like GOA maybe able to start their own development of the game, putting in more of their own content and addons.

 

[Ctuchik]

Mythic have already stated that Imperator is not to be compared to Imperator,

yes ok i see...........


but no.. i have a hard time to imagine that DAoC will die anytime soon.. imo, a few weeks of hardcore PR of the game will give lots and lots of new players.. especially when Catacombs come out as its more directed to pve lvl 1-50 and not mainly another ToA..... so if GOA are smart they do a massive PR campaign when Catacombs gets released...

i mean, all it would take is a middle page campaign in a few of the biggest PC mags in europe.. and give Gamespy some sort of deal with free months and stuff..

 

[GReaper]

As long as it generates some profit then its still worthwhile running.

Take a look at a worse case scenario, DAoC drops to just 10,000 subscribers at $10.95 per month - this would give $109,500 in revenue each month. You could probably hire 8 support people for $20,000 per month total (I think!). Add in a few programmers to make small modifications (no big game changes though), some server admins, significantly lower bandwidth costs as you wouldn't have as many players on at the same time.

Theres 250,000 subscribers at the moment (apparently), so getting to this state would be quite severe. UO peaked at 250,000 players in early 2003 and has dropped to about 175,000 now (according to MMOG Chart).

The main problem that I can see for Mythic is that World of Warcraft has been released in the US and will be launching in Europe soon. Imperator is supposed to launch in Winter 2005 (according to a press release in October this year), however I see very little publicity for it. People have been waiting for World of Warcraft for months, I seriously doubt anyone can say the same for Imperator.

 

[Shanaia]

The main problem that I can see for Mythic is that World of Warcraft has been released in the US and will be launching in Europe soon. Imperator is supposed to launch in Winter 2005 (according to a press release in October this year), however I see very little publicity for it. People have been waiting for World of Warcraft for months, I seriously doubt anyone can say the same for Imperator.

The higher you climb the harder you fall... yes there has been huge huge anticipation for WoW .. but now the whines and problems with full servers etc are equally large... still I agree all publicity is good publicity.

 

[Ilum]

maybe if mythic stops someone can make an independent version and fix all the flaws?

was done a year or so ago i think, but stopped due to legal reasons ^^

 

[Abel]

If DAoC ever dropped to 10,000 it's likely over. Comparing with other games DAoC probably needs 40,000 à 50,000 players to remain profitable. If they cut away all development maybe about 20.000 players.

Probably won't happen till another 5 years or so though (rough guess).

 

[cHodAX]

Theres 250,000 subscribers at the moment (apparently), so getting to this state would be quite severe

Even including Korea those figures are completely bogus, the US and EU combined currently have about 80,000 active subscribers. Now consider that DAoC Korea isn't exactly setting the world on fire either, they are stuck on version 1.63 and interest is dying fast with so many other strong MMORPG's available over there that aren't over a year behind when it comes to patches/expansions.

That '250k' figure that Mythic seem to enjoy quoting is more like 250k subscribers since day #1 of US retail, it does not give an accurate impression of how many people are currently playing. Just check all the current population figures for each region at prime time for those regions, there are barely 110k active players worldwide from what I can see and those numbers are falling fast. For example the GOA servers at primetime (8pm) are about 6k down on the 12 month average for last year, the US is recording similiar losses. Thats about a 20% fall in active players in just a few months .

Those people who think DAoC has another 5 years of life are deluding themselves, they always point to UO and EQ as the example but what they forget is that those games were massive during a time of very little competition but with so many MMORPG's now live and many more to come there is no way in hell that people will be playing a game as badly broken as DAoC for any more than another 2-3 years.

 

[cHodAX]

maybe if mythic stops someone can make an independent version and fix all the flaws?

was done a year or so ago i think, but stopped due to legal reasons ^^

Dark Ages RvR was more fun than normal DAoC has ever been, damn shame they closed down, would be still playing there myself if I could

 

[Sarnat]

Even including Korea those figures are completely bogus, the US and EU combined currently have about 80,000 active subscribers.

Now THAT number is bogus if something is bogus.

 

[cHodAX]

Now THAT number is bogus if something is bogus.

Prove it. I can get screenies of primetime numbers for both EU and US. I didn't just quote those flat numbers either, I left a 10k margain for casual players. As for Korea, the previous management of 'Buff' who hold the Korean licence refused to publicly give an accurate number for subcribers but thier business was failing and that in itself says something. Hopefully the new management will publish active player numbers but from the little I have read so far DAoC Korea is dying on it's feet. With 3 servers they aren't exactly pulling in major numbers.

So... you prove to me how my figures are bogus, hell even the Camelot Herald website 'official' active population figures back me up. Half the US servers don't even break 50% full at prime time and not one of the EU servers has come close to maximum population recently, Wednesday 14th Dec/04 at 8pm and not one server over 2500 players. At the same time the overall population number for EU is 21k which is drastically down and falls daily. Now try tell me that 250k isn't bogus, my numbers are far far closer to the truth than the official 'bullshit' that they try to con the peon's with.

 

[Icebreaker]

Even Excalibur had almost 3000 Players at his best times. A wee bit over 600 Players in Hib. Now we have like 250-320 Primetime. A few month ago we had close to 500 Primetime.

 

[cHodAX]

Even Excalibur had almost 3000 Players at his best times. A wee bit over 600 Players in Hib. Now we have like 250-320 Primetime. A few month ago we had close to 500 Primetime.

Yep, Excal showing 1700 people most nights lately, Prydwen is down to 1100 or so. Tragic.

 

[Danya]

30k primetime can indicate well over 100k players easily. Consider - not everyone plays everyday, you'll get some people who only log in every few days or once a week. So that means it's not the same 30k players every day. Many accounts may be active even if they aren't logged on much. There's a very large difference between subscription numbers and simultaneous logins.

I'd estimate that mythic still has around 150-200k subscribers, what effect WoW and EQ2 have is yet to be seen.

 

[Morchaoron]

wonder how many % of all subscribers are buffbots, most digusting marketing tactic ever :\

 

[Castus]

Even more so when u think its winter and most online games get more players playing at this time of year.

 

[Comos]

rvr is more of a big math where a bunch of exotic animals fight each other then a 'real' fight ;o

made me laugh irl... so true

 

[cHodAX]

30k primetime can indicate well over 100k players easily. Consider - not everyone plays everyday, you'll get some people who only log in every few days or once a week. So that means it's not the same 30k players every day. Many accounts may be active even if they aren't logged on much. There's a very large difference between subscription numbers and simultaneous logins.

So you are saying that for every player logged on at peak there are 2+ who aren't logged in? Considering that DAoC is a game that punishes the casual players I seriously have to doubt your theory there, practically everyone I know in this game plays 5+ days a week and I know alot of the players on Prywden so the basis is not from a small population sample. Consider this... even on the busiest days which are usually patch/expansion days you NEVER see servers full either here or on the US. The peak numbers are always after patches and the servers would be full if your theory of such a large casual playerbase was correct, it never happens or even comes close. Same on the US servers.

 

[Uku]

check this

i guy on our nazgul forums posted this , this could be the way to continue if mythic end camelot

 

[Morchaoron]

So you are saying that for every player logged on at peak there are 2+ who aren't logged in? Considering that DAoC is a game that punishes the casual players I seriously have to doubt your theory there, practically everyone I know in this game plays 5+ days a week and I know alot of the players on Prywden so the basis is not from a small population sample. Consider this... even on the busiest days which are usually patch/expansion days you NEVER see servers full either here or on the US. The peak numbers are always after patches and the servers would be full if your theory of such a large casual playerbase was correct, it never happens or even comes close. Same on the US servers.

hmmm may be true, even on these days when really big patches came with 'lots of new stuffs' it wasnt any busier then normal, while in most normal games you see a sudden increase of online players, who want to check out all the new fancy stuff ;o

 

[cHodAX]

hmmm may be true, even on these days when really big patches came with 'lots of new stuffs' it wasnt any busier then normal, while in most normal games you see a sudden increase of online players, who want to check out all the new fancy stuff ;o

Yep the numbers just don't add up, the one time when casual players would be online is when there is something new to check out and quite frankly it NEVER happens. That suggests the actual number of casual players is much much smaller than it used to be and we all know why... ToA killed DAoC for the true casual but the player numbers held fairly steady for a long while because of all the new buffbot accounts and of course the traded accounts. Now alot of dedicated people have had enough and are leaving, when they go they don't just cancel one account either it is two or three. That is why we are 6k down in just a few months.