Monday, January 21, 2008

A Pause in the MMO Action

There's a note on the Escapist which deserves your attention, if you want, relevant to the MMO space. In and of itself what the note says is not so important. It's what it means that I would suggest you notice.

The scoop looks like the Conan MMO is being delayed again. That is not so unusual. Put that on the shelf next to "Lord of the Rings online fails to totally pwn WoW" and "Star Trek online Canceled" and you might see a trend. Set that next to "Lord British fails to recapture glory with new MMO", and I'm beginning to have what my junior-high shops teacher called a mental working picture.

And that picture is one where the MMO space is dominated by a game that is almost 5 years old on the tech band. Yes I know it's only been publicly playable for just over 3 years. You need to remember that the engine doesn't really change after about 2/3 of the way into beta unless something has really gone wrong. What does it mean? I think it means if you want into the MMO space, you better have a very fat cheque book and some blackmail information on the Board of Directors to convince them to sell you WoW. Then you shut WoW down. Then you release your game.

I might be wrong. Have they announced another delay in Warhammer Online yet?

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