[MUD-Dev] Re: Online vs Offline (was CoH and others)

[Byron Ellacott]

Mike Rozak wrote:
> From Byron Ellacott:

>> Would there perhaps have been a far larger potential audience for
>> an offline game?  Not everyone has broadband, not everyone is
>> willing to pay a subscription fee, and not everyone is interested
>> in playing with a bunch of adolescents.

> I tried to figure this out the other night...

Blizzard will presumably soon have a rather good answer to this
question, being in a position to directly compare World of Warcraft
and Diablo II sales.  Whether that information is made available is
another matter.

> Not everyone has broadband - Yes, but this number is
> increasing. Any game design starting today can assume that a LARGE
> portion of the gamers 3 years from now will have it. Besides,
> current MMORPGs still work on 56K. From was I've read, the problem
> is not so much the bandwidth, but latency and data trasmission
> costs. Latency goes down with broadband (I think), but using
> broadband's bandwidth increases data costs.

I am, of course, speaking from the highly accurate standpoint of
anecdotal evidence.  This evidence suggests to me that many people
believe that MMOs (and other online games) may /work/ on 56K, but in
the same way that streaming movies can /work/ on 56K.  In other
words, broadband may be perceived as a requirement.  I'd be very
happy to see statistics on subscribers to MMOs who are using dialup
vs broadband, and I definitely agree that broadband is growing more
widespread.

The rest of your discussion I've snipped because it made sense, and
I had nothing of value to add to it. :)

--
bje
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev