Barbarious' Realistic And Logical Predictions For 2009 That Are More Reliable Based On Society And The MMORPG Industry Than Some Previous Predictions But Considering How Utterly Bollocks Our World Is Are Probably Still Going To Be Proven Wrong When Some Dipshit Title Like "Pokemon Online" Sweeps The Market And Makes Us All Look Like Reeeeetards.
Go.
1. Microtransactions will be attempted by 1 or more games that reach Western players and while they may gain some mild attention because of this the fact that Microtransactions are basically just a power-dildo for self-declared "casual gamers" will cause a backlash and thus will remain on games that see only "mild" to "low" success as players who would rather pay a flat fee for a level, competitive, playing field will return to more traditional pay models. Someone will then say "Hey! Microtransactions are kool for Asia tho!!" and the world will continue to ignore that person because frankly the cultural differences make that argument completely dumb. For a better example, direct your attention to Lineage 2.
2. Aion will be a big failure in the Western markets because the amount of people who want to play a clunky asian-wow-attempt in which the intensity level reaches that of applying wallpaper to your tile floor will remain disturbingly low and the features that resemble wow-knock-offs will be largely ignored by both western and eastern markets. The game will do exceedingly well in the East though.
3. Champions online will be a struggling disappointment as far as PC MMORPG's as it tries to divide the super-hero genre with DC Universe and probably fails miserably.
4. Star Trek Online will hit the markets quickly after Champion's Online realizes what a bad idea it was and commits suicide. Star Trek Online will have mild success if it launches before SW: TOR or no success if it launches after SW: TOR. Hence the game will probably jump the gun and be released hastily and unfinished as Cryptic tries to scoop up money ASAP and will ultimately plague the game from now till the apocalypse.
5. A Harry Potter MMORPG will be announced but will see limited success/hype since the Harry Potter fad is largely cultural vanilla now and doesn't draw the same hype. Additionally large portions of the Harry Potter fan-craze have moved on to Twilight now and will only be somewhat intrigued.
6. Guild Wars 2 will hang dangerously in a balance as NCSoft attempts to position itself between the failed Western launch of Aion and its eastern consumers. The game will either see a rush of development and a surge of production to a hasty launch or it will be delayed.
7. The Chronicles of Spellborn will launch to mixed reviews but will ultimately become a cult-hit with a steadily growing, loyal fan-base until.... oh wait.... that's that game with the half-baked DarkFall/Oblivion type combat system and almost no other features, 2 races (human and human with hooves) and 3 classes in a world where your feet are like 5 times larger than they should be and since the game started development have been cutting features systematically. Disregard my statement - the game will launch to mixed reviews and maintain a loyal fanbase of around 10 people. Mostly those who died in front of their computer while they were logged into this game.
8. Blizzard will announce their next-gen MMORPG and it will be something ridiculously good looking with insanely awesome features but by the time it gets anywhere close to launch the game will have morphed into a disturbing aborted child of World of Warcraft. The news will break during SoE's next big triple-A title launch and will thus make this year another hilarious one for the clowns at SoE.
9. Following the vast failure of Champions Online now on life-support to keep it from dying of DC Universe AIDS, Cryptic will launch Star Trek Online as fast as focking possible to beat The Old Republic to launch day. The game will see mild success but because it's Star Trek and is basically a joke to everyone who isn't a Star Trek fan the game will maintain only a modest, but devout community. Upon the launch of The Old Republic, the Star Wars community will jump onboard along with a bunch of non-fans who just happen to have seen the movies or think Star Wars is "okay". Plus older people who enjoyed Star Wars as a cultural thing. The Star Trek players will then abandon their game to play Star Wars: The Old Republic and Cryptic will announce that they are working on a World War 2 FPS game just to hash out their resume as the company that attempts to compete in genre's in which they stand no chance and get crushed mercilessly.
10. Jumpgate: Evolution will launch to a bunch of rabid fanboys from games like Free Space. The game will be a runaway success in the minds of those fanboys and the game will make enough stable subscriptions to maintain itself. The Fanboys will be confused why when they tell the rest of the MMORPG communities about Jumpgate nobody seems to care or have ever heard of it. Some day - in the dark future - they will realize it's because this is a Space Flight-Sim MMORPG and won't really appeal to about 85-90% of the total share of MMORPG subscribers. Flight-Sticks will continue to be as retarded as the Wii-Katana. No... that's a lie. The Wii-Katana is still more lame than Flight-Sticks, but they're close. Damn close.
11. The Agency will be a moderate PC Success but a huge Console success and will probably be the first truly successful thing that SOE has been a part of since Everquest Original (before they ruined it). SOE will probably begin devoting more attention to consoles. Since Blizzard will probably take a giant crap all over their next PC related convention anyways.
12. F2P Games will continue to resurrect zombified threads in the Ten Ton Hammer Tavern forum and Barbarious will continue to use her amazing powers to put them back in the ground where they belong. F2P games will largely live on the outskirts of the MMORPG Industry amusing children under 12, asian girls and that weird kid who sits in the back of class reading japanese magazines and eating pocky while he giggles to himself. F2P Games will continue to be considered the third-world of MMORPG's and will remains second-class citizens, because that's what they are.
13. Huxley will continue to remain vaporware.... I agree with this.
14. Stargate Worlds will be canceled because of that email I sent to the developers that informs them that Stargate was a terrible movie and is now a series on the Sci-Channel. The developers will tune in to Sci-Fi to confirm this theory and upon seeing it for themselves commit a mass ritual suicide out of self-disgust for ever thinking that anything on Sci-Fi Channel would make a decent or success MMORPG.
15. SW: TOR will gain the highest beta participation ever and will break 1 million subscribers as Star Wars fans dive into the game and Star Trek fans begrudgingly leave Star Trek Online to play TOR. SW: TOR will also pick up large handfuls of casual gamers and those who are only mildly immersed in Star Wars. This prediction will prove true even if the game sucks - because Star Wars fans are just that desperate.
16. SOE will latch onto Microtransactions at the behest of a talking mirror and will then be confused why their games continue to get such low subscriptions. The world will thus reaffirm that SOE is morons.
17. DC Universe will see moderate success but their tiny genre-share and current engine model will cause them to suffer AoC syndrome where the game doesn't run on like 50% of the machines of people who want to play it. Thus DC Universe will maintain a small but die-hard community.
18. NCSoft will continue to shock the world at the idea the company has stock. Aside from that Aion's 1 decent feature "You Can Fly LOLLLZZ" will not be enough to make people want to play a rehashed Lineage 2 / FF11.
19. Funcom will admit to the world that it's really bad at making MMORPG's and thus hand "The Secret World Online" off to a company who wasn't formed entirely from "The Grand Institution For People With Down Syndrome". Age of Conan will be made into a movie but all of the women's nipples will be cut off and the middle of the movie will just feature stills of people in the woods and maybe swinging a weapon at a deer. It will make millions.
20. A war will break out on the internet that will claim the lives of nearly 75% of the world's population and the sea will turn to molten lava.
That is all.
Congratulations - I hope you've enjoyed a glimpse at the industries future. Now that you know what's going to happen. You should probably start building your bomb shelter and radiation-proofing your CAT 5's. It's going to be a rough one.
Ten Ton Hammer's MMO Gaming Predictions for 2009
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