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Originally Posted by Winney
I have to agree with Orlun here on the fact that the opening argument is a bit flawed. First, you have to keep in mind that games now a days are much closer to a major movie production. They take years to complete and 10's of millions of dollars. It's not like a decade ago where a game would take 6-8 months and $100,000 or so to complete. So looking at that, if you shot for shorter retention you would need a massive initial buy by the consumer base to even think about calling it a success if you are planing on something like a 1 year run. Customers will stay loyal to a company if they feel the company has given them product that they liked and enjoyed. Look at most of us here, ex EQers mostly because of what Brad gave us under Verant. Sure, Sony trashed it over the years but the product was good enough to give us enjoyment and most of all attachment to our characters. So much so that after 6 years, love or hate the state of the game, a lot of us were still there. Now we see the people that gave us this initially launching their next project and of course we are chomping at the bit to see it. If they do another good job that sucks us in for 6 years you know we will all be chomping at the bit for the next project and so on. This is partly why WoW has such a large mass of people, the Blizzard name has a great following, albeit it is mostly from a younger audience

On the second point about Sigil also working on another sekret sauce, yes, that is true but it is extremely unlikely it would be an MMO of any kind. That would be just about the worst business decision they could make as a company. You are putting out a high quality niche product and then you release a product that would compete with it? Not very smart and we know that Sigil is a pretty bright bunch of guys, I reserve saying that about Microsoft at this time

So love it or hate, that expression a few years ago of Evercrack was valid and we really wouldn't want to have had it any other way


Winney

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