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http://misriahsolutions.com/articles/waiting-for-destiny/
Looks like this guy has some very good speculation going on, and I'd say it's pretty safe to say that Destiny is a real thing. After reading all of this, and based on the state of the gaming world (And Bungie's standing in it), here are my thoughts on it:
It'll probably crash, burn, and take the studio with it.
Before you rage out on me and call me a troll, this has a lot more to do with simple economics than it does Bungie's recent "decisions" in regards to game design and community.
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1. If it isn't Free to Play, it will financially destroy the studio.
I've noticed a trend in smaller subscription-based MMOs in recent times...They're all going Free to Play.
In fact...F2P seems to be the strongest business model for Massively Multiplayer games these days. Everything from Steam beginning to officially support Free to Play games, to the utterly inexplicable success of nearly every Zynga game, it seems like Free to Play MMOs are actually a pretty successful business venture.
Furthermore, half the reason that so many smaller MMO developers have gone Free is because they were tanking financially, and they threw a hail-mary to try and save their games.
Funny thing is...It worked. The Microtransaction/Optional Subscription model has proved to bring in more revenue and bigger user-bases than traditional, Subscription-Based models.
I think this is because in today's world, the concept of buying a game, and then being required to pay again and again to actually play it just doesn't sit well with consumers. This bad-taste is even worse with new IPs, because the consumer has no idea if what they're going to be paying out the butt for will even be good or not.
Of course, we saw this model succeed at first with things like Everquest and later WoW because they were new experiences...The kind of games that people had never seen before. That's why we see WoW continue to have such great success, because they got that initial userbase, and just built from there. People will pay because they know they're getting a quality product.
However, newer MMOs no longer have this luxury. People have this either "Been there, Done that"...or "Why not just play WoW?" mentality that's very hard to break through. After all...If you're going to pay 60 dollars, then 15 dollars a month after that for a game, why not go with something trusted by millions rather than something nobody's played before? It makes more sense to a consumer to go with what's trusted and popular, rather than taking a pretty large financial risk on something unknown.
Case and Point: Bungie has never made an MMO before, and venturing into this world is either a sink-or-swim ordeal. If Bungie even wants a chance at competing in the MMO world...
They need to use a Free to Play model.
If they don't, they will be destroying not only the potential for their next game, but the entire studio as well.
They don't have enough Bungie fanatics to sustain a subscription-based MMO...And I think those are the only people who would even be open to a Pay to Play Bungie game. Most people who are willing to Pay to Play already have their MMO of choice, and probably aren't going to switch. Any new MMOers would probably have to be fans of Bungie to begin with...Which brings us full circle, doesn't it?
Halo fans probably won't be interested either...Because it's not Halo. By the time Bungie releases their MMO, Halo fans will have the new Halo trilogy, and be tag-teamed up with 343 for all their Halo needs. They won't give Bungie half a care.
Which actually brings me to my next point...
2. Bungie pissed off a lot of their fans with Halo: Reach.
Whatever gigantic fanbase that Bungie had off of the release of Halo 3 got easily slashed in half, if not more, by Bungie's handling of Halo: Reach post-launch. Rather than argue semantics...Lets look at some numbers, shall we?
Reach had...
-8.5 million pre-orders, probably about 90% of these folks bought the game.
-Over 1 million players online at peak hours the first few weeks of launch.
Reach now has...
-~700k unique users log on every day.
-~150k players online at peak hours. (It didn't even break 200k on Bungie Day)
Lets go over this again: Around 8 million players bought the game; Now only 700k-800k of those players play the game anymore. It also went from having over a million players logged in on at once to only around 150k.
I'd say that's a BIG population drop, wouldn't you?
The only logical conclusion that I think we can draw from this is that a LOT of people who bought Reach grew dissatisfied with the game, and moved on to play something else.
Those are the numbers, and we need only look at some Community history to see all the dissatisfaction, rage, anger, discontent, and general disappointment for the game that has been expressed.
Thing is, Bungie did absolutely nothing to try and ease that discontent. We saw no Title Update from them, nor anything that really told the community "We're listening". Jeremiah tried his best...But you can only do so much with Playlist updates. There was no mention of the multitude of Reach's problems in the Weekly Updates, or anywhere on the proverbial Bungie Whiteboard.
And being steadfast to the end...Bungie used Default Reach settings for their Bungie vs. The World Playlist...Featuring almost every single complained-about feature in their big goodbye to the Halo fanbase...
Talk about HORRID PR skills...
My point: Bungie's handling of Reach post-launch has successfully alienated all but the ultra-fanatical Bungie fans. You will, of course, see many Bungie supporters that still stand up for their beloved studio here on the Forums. But, again, these people (And probably many of you who will be reading this) ARE the ultra-fanatical Bungie fans. The ever-supportive, die-hard fans. You will be the aforementioned, small, group of individuals that will buy and play Bungie's new MMO.
Unfortunately, as I've stated above, this is not enough to support an MMO. Even if every one of those 700k unique players every day were to begin subscribing to Bungie's new MMO...That MMO would only be doing "So-So" on an MMO's success scale.
And we all know that's not going to happen.
Bungie simply doesn't have the numbers to support a subscription-based MMO.
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So...How does Bungie recover from this nightmare they've created for themselves (Whether they actually realize it or not...)?
Bungie's MMO MUST be Free-to-Play, or their studio will crash and burn.
Bungie needs to earn some brownie points with their community, and I think one way to do that would be to make their next game free...Essentially. Give people a chance to play their next game and decide for themselves, without any financial burden, whether Bungie has learned from Reach or not.
Thanks for the read, if you did read this far.
Thoughts?
[Edited on 07.09.2011 11:00 PM PDT]