My single prediction for 2011…
is that in a year from now there will be some MMO bloggers that say “2011 was a bad year for MMOs, but 2012 should be quite good”.
There is not really any insight needed for this, just a look at history:
- In the end of 2008 there were bloggers who said that 2008 was a bad year for MMOs, but 2009 should be much better
- In the end of 2009 there were bloggers who said that 2009 was a bad year for MMOs, but 2010 should be much better
- In the end of 2010 there were bloggers who said that 2010 was a bad year for MMOs, but 2011 should be much better
So I am just assuming the trend will continue as before.
MMO gamers in a rage after another bad year
Personally I do not think it has been a bad year. There has certainly been some bad moments it seems, but overall I think it has been fairly good. There has been a number of existing titles that have released new content and made improvements over the past year. More games have been adjusting their payment models to not only offer the subscription-based approach, but also some alternatives. Although it must be said that that some games do not yet seem to treat the non-subscription options as fullfledged alternatives unfortunately.
The focus has certainly not been at new title releases of Western-oriented MMOs that strive for 2nd place after WoW in player numbers, but that would be a rather narrow definition of what would be a good year. As the market matures and existing games continue to improve (which is good) I think it is less likely for that situation to happen.
I daresay your prediction may be quite accurate given the trend. But then again, this year will see the release of a lot of AA titles that people have high hopes for. TOR, Guild Wars 2 and Rift immediately come to mind.
People had high hopes for Warhammer Online and Age of Conan as well, for example. Free Realms was the game that going to change a lot of things and possibly rival WoW in popularity. In the latter case, maybe it is rivaling WoW – I have no idea and perhaps neither does the blogosphere.
I am not saying that there will not be successful games, just predicting blogosphere reactions, which could be quite different from commercial success/failure.