End of an MMO: TERA

Well, TERA is shutting down.

 

The game, which is an acronym for The Exiled Realm of Arborea, is one of those MMO titles that can bring out strong opinions among fans of the MMO genre. Yes, it has exciting action combat. Yes, the graphics are well done. 

But.

Almost from Day One, TERA developed a reputation for what I'm politely calling "fanservice". If you thought my cheeky (!) commentary by Neve about the Stitched Trousers was something, imagine if she got a hold of the outfits I discovered in TERA.

This was one of the milder ones I encountered.

And this wasn't bringing in the so-called running form the Castanic females have:

Apparently running, bent over, with your panties out is a thing in Korean MMOs.

But the thing is, even if all that went away, TERA would have the reputation it does because of one thing only: the Elin.

I won't dignify a link to it, but the Elin are supposedly an ancient spirit race who just so happen to look like prepubescent girls. ALL OF THEM.

And then to top it off, TERA dresses the Elin up in sexualized outfits. BECAUSE OF COURSE THEY DO.

The kicker is that the US release of TERA actually has the Elin's outfits toned down; the Korean release shows them even skimpier. If that isn't a call to a dark corner of the internet that "boy, have we got a game for you!" I don't know what does.

I can't simply justify TERA's behavior in this manner, because they had to know that the Elin would attract a certain crowd, but there it is. And because of it, I'm not sorry to see it go the way of the dodo.

***

While I'd like to spend more time musing about TERA, I think Josh Strife Hayes did a great job on the game with his Wost MMO Ever series when he took on TERA:

I think there's a good story somewhere in the game, but it's not engaging enough to overcome all the ridiculous outfits and the lolli creeper vibe I get from TERA. I mean, the graphics are great, the combat is fine, and the music is good. Why oh why did Bluehole make these design decisions?

If you'd have asked me which game would have died first, TERA or ArcheAge, I'd have picked ArcheAge. The rapid decline in server population coupled with missing pieces to the story from the get go usually would be the death knell of a game. I mean, both games share obvious fanservice elements, such as obvious boob physics and overly revealing costumes* and there's parts of the storyline in both games that make me feel like I'm in an anime. So there's a ton of similarities here. The biggest difference here is that TERA has the Elin, and ArcheAge doesn't. Full stop.

So I guess I can look at TERA and think "What if?" and shake my head.

*And let's be honest, more than just that. The walking and running motions of female toons, the exaggerated bustlines, and the tendency to wear high heels all the time are all hallmarks of Korean MMOs. Both games happen to have these in spades. 

But I think it needs to be said: I'm not a prude. If things such as the outfit options had a wide variety of available selections and you could choose what you liked to wear, whether sexy and revealing or more realistic armor, then I'd be fine with it. After all, everybody is different and has their own opinions on what to wear. It's the lack of choice that annoys me the most.

Farewell, Nexus

I won't be seeing this guy again.
The Caretaker zapped him along with
the rest of Nexus

I managed to get online with 5 minutes before shutdown, but my screenshots never took. I wasn't surprised, as the servers were overloaded with people trying to say goodbye.

End of the Road for another MMO -- With Updates

Age of Conan has outlasted another MMO.

After multiple years worth of speculation, Wildstar is shutting down.

When I tried the game in Beta I never thought I'd say this, but I'm gonna miss the storyline. Unfortunately for Wildstar, the subscription model coupled to a truly hardcore Vanilla WoW-esque experience wasn't a model for success in today's market.

The past 2+ years I played Wildstar I thought that Carbine had corrected their launch problems and had pivoted to growth in the future, but by then the MMO market had passed them by.

To be honest, I have no idea how Age of Conan is still going after all this time while Wildstar and Marvel Heroes are on the dustbins of history, but I do have some ideas why Wildstar and Marvel Heroes failed.

I don't believe it's an accident that both games were the only games from a development studio. There was no other source of income, and failure of any sort was catastrophic. Even back in 2004, if WoW failed after launch Blizzard had quite a few games/properties that they could use to survive and give WoW a chance to find its feet. Likewise, SWTOR and Elder Scrolls Online have well established and diversified development houses behind those games and can weather the capricious nature of the video game market. Wildstar had a good launch but then discovered that items such as truly nasty attunement turned people off, which led to people dropping subs almost immediately.*

Judging by this info alone, that would likely peg LOTRO as the next MMOs to potentially shut down. LOTRO keeps chugging along, however, and they have more items in the development pipeline, but we'll see how things look in a year from now.

Right now, I don't see the MMO market as a growth area; the MOBA and eSports movement has sucked the hardcore PvPers away, and WoW still takes up most of the oxygen even in a reduced MMO space. A game company that develops an MMO would have to recognize that WoW will be the only sub (or the primary sub) of almost all MMO gamers**, and at the same time a F2P MMO carries with it tremendous risks or being accused of monetizing the game or creating a P2W environment. B2P, like GW2 or ESO or FFXIV, is likely the best option. But even then, a development house shouldn't put all of its eggs in one basket but instead create some other games or software products first. That way, a game company doesn't have to fret quite so much if it takes a while for an MMO to find its feet.

I do have to wonder whether an MMO based in a classic style isometric RPG format might succeed where others failed, given all of the good CRPGs that have come out in that space recently.

But I'm not one for reading the tea leaves, because I'm lousy at prediction. (And I drink coffee anyway.)

I hope the people at Carbine Studios land on their feet. It's never fun to lose your job.

Thanks for the memories, Wildstar.


EtA: There is a post in the comment section of the Kotaku article by an ex-Carbine dev who worked on Wildstar, and this dev has some really cogent points about the Wildstar debacle. It's a fascinating read, and while it doesn't completely eliminate my point of having only one game being very risky for a software studio, it does highlight the extreme mismanagement at Carbine Studios itself. (And also Paragon Studios, whose title City of Heroes was shut down by NCSoft a few years ago.) Yeah, while I'd like to think mismanagement doesn't happen, I know from experience in years past that it does in software companies. And that mismanagement finally did Wildstar in.




*Blizzard has no such illusions about WoW Classic, which is why they're taking it slow and not trying to keep people's hopes up.

**I realize I'm the exception in that my sub is SWTOR, but numbers wise I think I'm pretty accurate in that statement.