Keen’s Predictions for 2011

Happy New Year everyone!  It’s time to make some predictions about the coming year.   I’ve given it a lot of thought over the past few days and narrowed it down to the following:

1. Rift – My impressions of Rift have been positive, although you may consider them tainted by the fact that I say the game is pretty standard fair.  I predict that the game will launch and, as I’ve said all along, be successful for those who like themepark games but currently have nothing to play like WoW.  The problem will be when GW2 and SWTOR launch and players have to struggle with this exact question: Why should I continue playing Rift?  GW2 and SWTOR will offer a big enough alternative to the generic, yet lovable, Rift.

2. DCUO – Unlike Champions online, DCUO will last longer than three days.  Graev enjoys the PS3 version and has shown me some great things.  I thought it looked like a lot of fun on the console since it plays like an action game.  I predict that it will be fun on consoles for a little while, but the lack of community will ultimately give players no reason to stick around.  The PC version won’t do well.

3. GW2 – I’m predicting a very late 2011 release conflicting with SWTOR which will cause issues for both games.  Something about the way the dynamic content and world has been previewed gives me a bad feeling.  My instincts tell me to expect an instanced world or one that isn’t truly dynamic but instead scripted (like rifts in Rift).  The PvP will be cool, for a while. It will win game of the year in the MMO circle.

4. SWTOR – Despite its use of instancing and singleplayer nature, I think SWTOR will turn out to be a lot of fun.  People who go in skeptical will be pleasantly surprised — myself included.  There is much to be leery about, but it will turn out to be nothing.

5. DAOC 2– Call it intuition, instincts, midi-chlorians, or just a hunch… I think we’re going to see an announcement about DAOC 2.  While writing this prediction I find myself suddenly prompted to predict talks of a spiritual successor to the original UO as well.

6. 3D gaming, TV’s, and movies are forgotten – I think it’s a fad.  The 3DS will sell bajillions but it won’t last.  I think movies and TV’s are secretly on their way out.  Something about eye cancer. That’s a joke.

7. Motion technology flops because developers finally realize real gamers prefer to sit on their butts. Need I say more?

8. Call of Duty 7… wait, are we on 8 or is it 9?

9. Mobile gaming will expand – With developers like Epic and id hard at work, it seems obvious to predict that we’re going to see something new come around.   What isn’t so obvious will be the style in which they expand.  I predict they’ll be less and less autonomous and be more tied to Computers and consoles.  It will be like remotely connecting to your computer or console to play the games you own.

10. Cryptic’s Neverwinter – Should I try and predict an upset by saying it will be good?

11. On April 1, 2011 Blizzard will announce that Diablo 3 is launching in November.

What do you think?  Let us know if you’re predicting anything interesting for 2011!

  • I like most of it. Didn’t you do one for 2010? Any came true?

    A lot of people predict Vanguard being gone. Not yet. I’d so try DAOC2.

    Been in DCUO beta pc, I think it’ll have the same following assumptions COX and CO. How long remain to be seen.

  • Neverwinter as in a Neverwinter Nights MMO? I so loved both of the games and their expansions but seeing Cryptic’s record so far, what makes you think it will be worth a shot, did they reform their development teams or something?
    I guess it’ll be as close to a baldur’s gate mmo as we’ll ever get and it’d suck to see such a rich universe get ruined 🙁

  • I think Diablo 3 actually has a decent chance of releasing this year.

    Also, no Duke Nukem Forever prediction, for shame!

  • Borderlands 2 announced, the world will rejoice.

    D3 will launch, it seemed very ready at Blizzcon this year. I sort of hope SWTOR flops, like FFXIV flop. I think it is taking lots of steps in the wrong direction for the MMO genre, regardless of it being a good game or not.

  • If you want to play Neverwinter Nights with lots of people, play NwN1 or NwN2 multiplayer. Lots of people still playing those.

  • I am liking your list and seeing a lot of impressions and predictions I can agree with. SWTOR will hopefully be an amazing game that brings me back to my beloved Star Wars franchise and counter the evil SOE did with SWG. I tried Rift out and seeing as I’ve been playing WoW for 6 years, like you said I gave up on it. GW2 I’ll agree with is a bit over hyped and a lot of the “dynamic” content they talk about is just political spins on what the content will actually represent. It will be good, but not amazing.

    I, however, do not agree with your prediction with 3D. The industry is constantly moving forward with quality, and 3D is yet another step in the right direction. Now, am I talking about the “ball jumps out at your face and you scream,” 3D effect? No. I am talking about how watching a 3D movie really brings out the layers in a movie to make you think your looking into another world in a small box versus a flat image with little depth on your screen. 3D may not be mind-blowing, but it definitely helps with really seeing the depth in some movies.

    Sorry about my wall of text but I thought i’d share with you 😛

    PS: WTF?!?! Crpytic on Neverwinter? Oh…R.A. Salvatore is committing suicide right now for what they will bring to the D&D universe..

  • Oh, forgot to add, any predictions on Planetside Next? Was my favorite MMORPG until they released the expansions that ruined everything in that game: Mechs.

    Love to hear you opinion on it throughout the year 🙂

  • Tabula Rasa revival announcement.(I knew all those blood sacrifices would finally work.)
    DCUO will be a hit on the PS3. Although the text chat channels will be silent, the voice channels will buzz.
    Allods will announce a subscription plan similar to Turbines offerings for DDO and LOTRO. It will draw some people back, but this phrase will be apt: Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.

  • I hope you are right about a DAoC 2 announcement. It would be stupid or someone not to do this. I am even more hopeful (and less optimistic) that they will do it right. If it’s developed by the same Mythic that made WAR…oh boy.

  • Nintendo just announced that the new 3D DS is not to be used by young children due to it harming eye development. I think this could be the beginning of a string of eye related issues from 3D. I honestly think it’s over rated.

  • Would love to see DAoC 2. One problem with that though; aren’t the rights now owned by EA? I am not sure that Mark Jacobs retains any rights to the DAoC IP since he left EA. EA is running DAoC 1 and I really don’t see them releasing the IP rights to Jacobs.

    If you were talking about EA making DAoC 2…..well, count me out. EA has shown they have no idea how to run a MMO. Which is why I have very low expectations for SW:ToR.

  • I would not put up high hopes for DAOC 2. EA could never even get a UO2 out the door after a few tries. If it was SOE, Ncsoft or one of the many others i would trust them.

    Funny thing is. If rifts actually put in a DAOC type system it would be enough to put people over the edge about it. And make it a contender with Swtor or gw2. Especially if there was a 3rd faction.

  • I doubt on DAOC2, in fact I see it more likely EA shuts down Mythic and its current games and disperses the few good people left to other EA companies/projects.

    SWTOR will be huge.(think Mass effect online) Single player RPG players will take to it like mad dogs along with their MMO cousins and all kinds of nerd SW fans.

    Rift will follow many other hyped games ala AOC and War.. lots of people month 1, rapid decline and by year end a footnote on the MMO landscape.

    DoTA 2 from Valve will be a sleeper hit!

    D3 will be out for Xmas… another mass hit for Blizz surpassing SC2 numbers.

    bunch of other big games to come out.. dragon age 2, mass 3, gears 3, crysis 2, etc etc

    quick list of big games for 2011
    http://pc.ign.com/articles/114/1140196p1.html

  • Rift – Completely wrong. The game has no life in it. Everything is static and there is no ‘world’. Rifts themselves could be interesting if they didn’t spawn your average boring mobs. Which is effectively what the game is about, doing the same thing over and over. Rifts are basically the developers trying to appeal to the players saying, ‘look! we can do random stuff that affects the world a little!’ while in fact the contents of the Rifts are just as boring as the game itself because the core is dead.
    There is no ‘fixing’ Rift beyond this point, it is dead in the water. What you see is what you get. And what I saw was a shallow game with no life in the world. The only redeeming feature being the class system, but that is nothing without an interesting world, monsters and expanded player interaction modes.

    GW2 – One big meh. DRAMATIC EVENTS! Also heard some horrible news about every player living in their own game (a.k.a. phrasing to the extreme)… DEVELOPERS, THIS IS NOT A MMORPG.

    SWTOR – 90% of their budget is going into voice and cgi work. Nuff said. At least it will continue the Lucas legecy.

    DAOC 2 – Isn’t mythic pretty much dead?

    3D anything – Pretty much correct. In films and such there is no point because the point of 3D IRL is interaction. While gaming I can see minor amount of more use for 3D, but even that is not enough.

    The fact that six year olds cannot play the 3DS speaks volumes about the device. Children not being able to play gameboy during the 90s would have been unheard of, and the same still exists. Even if it does sell well at first, it will only be the hardcore fans. It will drop quickly from there. Also the price point is horrible. I don’t think it will even sell that many to begin with because of the price.

    Motion gaming – hype will be lost and it will become part of normal gaming (almost like a niche) next generation when motion control will come in-the-box with all consoles like it did the Wii. And like the Wii most games will not use it, but there will always be the option to use it. Think the NES gun.

    Call of Duty – Activision will buy a larger share of the video games market. Maybe even going after larger developers, buying them out completely. They already have Bungie working for them (how did they do that again?). Their next year will be equal (give or take) to their last one if they continue as they are. They are a huge player, soon they will become more important then Sony or Microsoft since they are net-gaining billions while Sony/Microsoft have been losing that many. While EA will continue to hit rock-bottom, not as hard as this year with APB and other horrible messes, but still slowly go downhill.

    Mobile gaming – will stabilise. How can you see expansion of this area? I cannot. Just because some bigger names are getting into it, does not mean it will grow. The console gamers will stay on consoles and the iPhone/etc gamers will keep using these devices for fun mini games. The only thing I might consider is more Gameboy/DS styled games which allow you to stop/start more. But even then I doubt that will really expand anything since you already get these things on the DS, and that is where people go to get them.

    Console sales – the 360 will take away some PS3 sales, because PS3 will rise again because of the modding scene. But in general they will be stabilised between the HD twins, even slightly falling. Wii sales will fall more dramaticly as Nintendo struggles to realise what to do with their console, as they realise that ‘hardcore’ titles like Galaxy 2 don’t move consoles. There are currently no expected Wii titles in the coming future, only 3DS ones.

    Software – Will stabilise, and might even slightly rise with the fact that consoles are slowly being owned by a larger amount of people.

  • Keen, you need to read international community pages more often or talk to people who visit games conventions worldwide. You seem to be ignoring sandboxes and games from outside the US for some reason.

    What about Tera, Earthrise, ArchAge – games with great potential…!?

  • I have hopes for Rift and I would love a DAoC2.
    Motion gaming is here to stay and will only develop more and more. I just bought a Kinect and it is quite clear that once the devs are able to adjust a little and even more when next generation comes along there will be great fun with these advices.
    Already sport games are good fun, but imagine a sword fighting game like the old Robin Hood movie with Errol Flynn, done right that would be amazing with a Kinect-like system!
    Besides, the casual market for motion gaming is enormous.

  • Was just about to ask the same thing November… but Keen most likely merely spoke to games he’s been following.

    Terra hits Korean Beta on Jan 11th.

  • DAOC2: Mythic is dead. Maybe the Bioware part of the division would do it. But they probably have other projects already. Although if WAR dies completely, They’ll want a high profile medieval fantasy MMO to go with their tech fantasy SWTOR. But I wouldn’t count on the medieval fantasy market being covered by DAOC2. They could more profitably bank on the popularity of Dragon Age instead.

    RIFT: Why again would I play this instead of WoW? And I dislike many things in WoW. But it’s a stable, well-made standby to park in (WAR and Biowaagh are dead to me) while waiting on other games. There will be plenty of people playing at launch because they’re tired of WoW, EQ2, WAR, etc. But they’ll bore and will jump ship when GW2 launches.

    GW2: The dynamic content will be dynamic enough. The game will live up to enough expectations to be a hit. There’s no subscription, so people won’t have to choose between it and WoW and SWTOR. Like GW, it’ll be a good thing to have on your hard drive for when your subscription game or games drive you nuts.

    Mythic: The name and studio itself will disappear. DAOC will continue to amble along. WAR will either be placed in a Vanguard-like coma and my shut down by the end of the year.

    Jumpgate Evolution: Once Gazillion settles with Codemasters, we’ll be hearing talk of the game and its development once more. Who knows, we may end up playing it by the end of the year. (Does anybody know if Lance Robertson still works for NetDevil?)

    DCUO: Near total absence of advertising signals a soft release of the title. SOE is trying to avoid an expensive and painful AoC/WAR style release and exodus. (Or SOE is being penny wise and pound foolish!) The click heavy combos will send many an old fart to treatment for carpal tunnel, as most MMO players who remember or care about DC comics are over 40.

  • I think it’s funny how people (like Anne) base their dislike of a game of some loose nonfactual information or a complete misunderstanding without spending a single minute looking facts up. But if you wan’t to not like a game I guess it’s a good approach.

    My 2 cents:
    Rift, tried it, pretty much what has been said, if you enjoy WoW there’s not much reason to play it but it seems a decent game.

    GW2, looks very interesting and I both hope and think ANet will pull it off, I’m trying hard not to get hyped though, been burnt too many times…

    SWTOR, I hope it flops and I think it will, why? Extremely high expectations from fanbase that will be hard or even impossible to match. Myself I don’t enjoy much of Bioware games nor Star Wars, so it holds no interest to me, and thus I hope it flops so we have more people playing other games that I like ^^

    The others I don’t even care to comment on.

  • Swtor: Maybe launchers later this year and does well in intial sales. Does very well early on till people get sick and tired of spending half their game in conversation chains. Game does well but bioware still faces the reality later there is no such thing as WoW 2.0

    GW2: Does very well but run into a lot of kinks with their dynamic content not working as it should. The game will stay subscriptionless but people will end up getting pissed off at the online stores as NCsoft pushes arenanet to make real MMO profits. The store will be most respectable, but a few things will vex people.

    DCUO does well but people unsub later due to lack of content and endgame. People use to traditional MMO combat continue to complain a lot but nothing will happen (hopefully). The games subscription base will continue to go up and down depending on content released by SOE.

    Rift: Does well and hold on to a solid subscription number of a few hundred thousand. Intial box sales will be ok but not substantial.

    DF2010(11): Aventurine will continue trying to fix their retarded skill system. Other aspects such as offline leveling will increase to help alleviate some of the grind. It will continue to chug forward for better or worse.

    Mortal Online: Will likely close due to loans being called in. or continue as the halfbaked project of some rich swedish kid.

    Tera: Will be ok and do pretty well. it will likely not see the success of Aion due to stiff competition within the western markets. It will likely be better localized then Aion and maybe lack the grind. It will be very popular in Korea.

    Aion: Continues to do well even though everyone calls it dead.

    AOC: Well people realize the current game director brought the game up to a decent level people will learn he is prob not that good at making the game fun by WoW type questin standards.

    war: Slowly dies, never close.

    earthrise: Will turn out similar to darkfall with smarter game design choices. Will go down the indy rocky road but do well by its standards in the end.

    F2P and social games: We get swamped by vindictus type games from korea. A few smart indy companies get the bright idea to make their own. The market will continue to expand but will not overtake the subscription model for AAA MMOs. People will continue to scream the sky is falling and talk about the future. But sober people will realize the market only overlap in certain areas. A few interesting webbased hardcore MMOs will come out. Cryptic will do ok in the F2P market. Champions will get flushed out as a decent game.

  • @Phandy – Keen’s sexual orientation has nothing to do with this… although there is nothing wrong with that.. 🙂

  • @Romble: I fixed his typo. 😉

    @Christopher: -IF- and that’s a big -IF- Planetside Next actually releases this year, I think it will be worth checking out. The first was a decade ahead of its time.

    @November: I keep my eyes open for foreign titles and games like TERA being translated over to a NA version. I didn’t have any predictions to make about them that seemed interesting enough. I can give you one now if you’d like: TERA will mirror Aion’s launch.

  • Interesting thought, for whatever reason I hadn’t really considered what there is to look forward to in the MMO sphere in 2011…

    If I had to guess:

    TERA: Another Asian MMO that looks pretty and flops hard in the west, due to its ten year old philosophy towards leveling and content in general.

    SWTOR: I think it’ll be a hit – it’s fucking Star Wars and Bioware, after all, and they’re fundamentally making a very safe product – but its growth will be limited by sharing too much of WoW’s mental market space. I think they’ll have trouble keeping WoW players simply due to inertia and the fact that you can’t out-Blizzard Blizzard. I wonder how many potential long-term MMO players aren’t yet trapped by WoW that it can draw from?

    Rift: Similar to SWTOR, I think it will get good reviews and launch well, but have trouble keeping people away from WoW in the longer term. A new class system and the rift system will not trump WoW’s quality, and I hope they’re prepared to settle for a perfectly respectable 3-400K subs.

    GW2: Will fill the same niche as Guildwars, being the kinda-MMO for people who don’t really want an MMO, and as such, will once again sell a few million copies. GW2 will have much less content than most MMOs (by design), with a focus on alts and PvP rather than endgame progression. Due to this, traditional medium-hardcore MMO players will stick with WoW and Rift.

    The event system will work exactly like they explain it, as a giant series of interconnected scripted story chains. Perhaps people will finally accept that there is no phasing and minimal instancing, but I doubt it. 🙂 As has already been said, this will be a game you play through for the story, and then keep installed so you can log in once in a while during holiday events.

    If they really do it well, hopefully there will be a long-term PvP scene that stays active, but it’s too early to say. The cash shop will be irritating, and will have a couple really troubling items, but overall will be no better or worse than any others.

    And yeah, my GW2 section is super long, but that’s the game I plan to be playing and have followed closely. I may be seeing it through fanboy lenses to a degree, but I think this is a pretty even-handed view at the moment.

  • Anne, actually a lot of people couldn’t play the gameboy in 1990. People forget the original used a green lcd screen with some serious motion blur, making it hard as hell to play in the car, for example.

    The 3d warning is because all 3D is stressful to watch due to the mental trickery your brain does to process it, and it’s not good to watch for extended periods of time, adult or child. In very young children I guess they are concerned that they wont be fully developed and that constant play might have bad effects. I know for me, I can’t watch 3-D for that long.

    Motion tech flopping…well Keen, all I can say is that the Kinect was a stealth success over this holiday season. Remote-based motion controls might fail, but Kinect is not only good on console, it’s being hacked to make some amazing things. Other motion tech probably will, since it’s not going to be able to correspond to motions as well, and will be very inaccurate.

  • @ Proximo

    I played the game in two betas (first and the last) and did look up information on it. I prefer non-Trion information as I want INFORMATION and not PROPAGANDA.

    But w/e, feel free to judge me since you don’t have a good or valid argument to support yourself. Why would you play this over WoW?

    ‘Polish’ is just another word for, ‘most restrictive and shallow themepark game you will ever play’.

    I promise you Rift will fail to do anything. The least they can hope for is a stable player base.

    You can have your two cents back, because it is worthless. Who would want two cents that comes from someone with such a rubbish opinion?

  • @ Dblade
    I know why little kids can’t play it, why would you assume I needed this information?

    Simple motion blur while moving has nothing on kids and many adults either having a chance to damage their eyes, get headaches (etc) or not seeing it at all.

    And how can they stop a lot of kids playing? Kids will WANT to play this stuff, and I see a lot of legel issues in the future. Nintendo is being beyond stupid.

  • @ Anne
    I don’t know where you heard that GW2 will have players by themself in their own little world, but that’s not right at least. You might be thinking of the home instance the player gets, wich is like player housing, only its not just a house, but an entire district in the captial city of your race. Guild Wars 2 will very much be an MMO.

    As for Keen’s prediction, I too am a little sceptical at the dynamic events, just because they base pretty much most of the games content on them it seems, but we’ll just wait and see. One thing I’m not worried about when it comes to GW2 however is the world, I think we will se a huge and beautiful persistent world ^^

  • I’m afraid you’re right about SWTOR & GW2 releasing close enough for a collision.

    All the rest are quite irrelevant in my opinion. Props for pointing the right question – there’s no way anyone can justify playing Rift while there’s WoW (except for rare case of stubbornness).

    So back to the big ones – GW2 and SWTOR have one more game to worry about and that’s Diablo 3. I’m not sure SWTOR was ready for release this holiday season but even if it was, Blizz made it impossible with Cata. Blizz still holds a trupm card for 2011 in the face of D3. Although it’s not an MMO D3 has some MMO-ish multiplayer features, and it would block a sizable portion of great number of people’s time.

    Ultimately i think GW2 will do well and once and for all even the likes of Anne will not have what to complain about. (Yes it’s persistant and seamless world, yes no monthly fees etc.)

    Something that really works for GW2 is that even those who would play another game would buy it as it is with no fees. (Also keep in mind about 2 mil. former GW players just waiting to press the “Buy” button) So sell numbers should be pretty high and trumpeted around loudly enough to induce more interest – it’s the network effect.

    I think the best for them would be to release before SWTOR even if it’s a month or two ahead. Next best release window would be 6 months after – or about an average dragon-age-playthrough time when people are ready to check another game. 😉

    I think ultimately SWTOR will do well in short term – selling well and keeping players for the first year, but i’m highly skeptical for this game. Everyone i know plans to play it as a stand-alone singleplayer RPG campaign, and i believe it would be largely this.

    What amazes me are press releases like the one that they would need 2 mil. players for 2 years to break even, or that they plan a 10-year long game (newsflash – WoW isn’t 10 y.o. yet and it’s success is a freak of nature; how can you _plan_ to copy that is beyond me…)

    All these statements lead me to believe that those people are so disconnected with reality it’s scary. But nevertheless i think SWTOR will do fine.

  • Wow, so many of you people sound so cynical and Jaded(Anne esp.)Just /ragequit life and spare us the drab please. Sigh

  • @ Joy-Energiser

    Cynical – about what? Never said GW2 wouldn’t be good. I am hoping it is, everyone has a bit of cynicism to them. And if they don’t then they are mindless fanboys. For MMORPGs, I think it has the most cynics more then any game genre. And it should be that way.

    Jaded – Well I played Rift it actuality and know it is what it is. A shallow game with no life, Rifts are just a mechanic for the developers to hide that fact. Like I said, I hope GW2 is good. I don’t think it will be a game changing, but I still hope it will be the best for the genre in a while. SWTOR, I have less hope for. But a part from the boring ‘Bioware’ stuff (the dialogue, a.k.a. personality tests) I also hope that it has the depth to pull it through. The classes and the like are truly attractive and different enough from your average fantasy MMORPG.

    I would /ragequit videogames (at least) but I honestly have nothing better to do then to come on here and be jaded/cynical.

  • I’d like to see Vanguard and STO go F2P and Warhammer release a proper expansion. Also I reckon Dust 514 will launch but not really create much of a splash.

  • @Anne: I was referring to your statements bout GW2, not Rift.
    And I don´t care if you find my opinion worthless. 🙂

  • My prediction (and hope) is that the general gaming public will realise at last the limitations of the current gen console hardware and become frustrated by it. PC gaming will really begin to shine.

    The Witcher 2 will be a huge PC hit and CD project red will have a very hard time (and possibly fail again) to port the game to consoles.

    Guild Wars 2 will be a big hit, servers will crash and struggle to begin with, but the player base will hang around because they arent paying a monthly fee. The game will offer the best pve content to date but the pvp content will be a huge disappointment.

    Skyrim will be delayed to 2012.

  • I predict a Nov/Dec announcement on DAOC 2. The game will release 3rd qtr 2012, to rave reviews. And of course the Mids and Hibs will still have to team up to beat the Albs. Happy New Years !!!!!

  • “The classes and the like are truly attractive and different enough from your average fantasy MMORPG.”

    Anne makes a really good point here that’s often missed – SWTOR will become *the* big Sci-Fi (such as it is, of course, with Jedi Gandalfs everywhere) MMO in the market when it launches – EvE, while I love it, is too niche to count in this context.

    I think this will be a big boon for SWTOR. All the WoW players who like the basic mechanics, but are really sick of the generic fantasy tropes, can move over to SWTOR and basically play the same game with branching dialog and lasers.

    For this and other reasons I increasingly see SWTOR doing really well, even though I have no interest in it personally. I think it’s just set up to cater to a lot of the right urges in the right people.

    But as has been said, it seems like it’s at risk of dying a slow death as people who play it as a single player game get tired of paying the monthly fees. Although plenty of WoW players are content to pay 15/mo for a solo alt/questing game…

  • I remember swtor devs posted a quest breakdown. From the way things looked their was a lot more traditional MMO quests then I expected. I am thinking the game will be like lotro or aoc with the tortage big quest at the beginning then branching out to more traditional quest later on.

    I think its basically gonna be an MMO interspliced with Bioware singleplayer elements.

  • Okay, here are my 2011 predictions:

    – EA will continue to be the anti-Christ of publishers; gobbling up good developers and turning them into shit slinging monkeys while continuing their death march of putting out nothing but sequels and bad movie tie-in games.

    – New MMO releases will continue to suck and lack any innovation and creativity. But developers are too scared to think outside the box because their VC money backers don’t want creativity but rather “safe bets”, i.e. WoW clones with 1-2 unique twists – see Rift.

    – $OE will continue to provide the largest MMO offerings to the public that no one cares about.

    – XBOX will continue to be the top selling console due to the fact that most XBRICK owners have had to purchase at least 3+ due to the worst piece of shit hardware ever being made, XBRICK executives will continue to avoid prison time for this abortion.

    – Yes, there will be a Madden 12, and it will provide pseudo NFL owners with a new option called “stock options”, something EA executives are very familiar with; it basically boils down to accruing a large volume of stocks, drinking baby blood at midnight and urinating on your customer base all for the sacred dollar/end-of-year bonus.

    – There will be another CoD, and it will suck, but all of the fanboys will claim that it is better then the last game, but Activision will actually just start rebranding older CoD games but the fanboys won’t notice at all, Bobby Kotick will go cross-eyed from all of the money he has and require experimental surgery to fix this rare disease, only to have it return when they rebrand CoD 1 and the whole process will start over again.

    – The FDA will require that NCsoft stop marketing Guild Wars as an MMO and force them to remove the acronym MMORPG from their marketing, because even some bass ackward federal employee can tell its not.

    – The game of the year for 2011 will have a roman numeral after its title.

  • DCUO does ok in sales, drops rapidly after about 2 months for reasons described above.

    Rift launches in a WoW lull and does pretty well in sales (500k+), retention will depend on how compelling the endgame is relative to WoW, I’ll take a shot in the dark and suggest it’s a decent second choice and so the game does ok but not amazing on retention, still better than any recent game.

    GW2 comes out early next year. Underwhelms slightly. Sells 1.5m+ copies in six months on the strength of the no-sub policy, player boredom with other games.

    SWTOR comes out fairly early next year. Underwhelms moderately, but gets decent reviews off the writing and Bioware name. Sells 2m+ copies, leaks subscribers fairly heavily for a year before stabilizing around the fanboys, who are reasonably entertained.

    DAOC2 not announced, EA has its hands full with SWTOR from what I hear.

    3D gaming drops off due to various eyestrain issues. 3D movies are here to stay as an option for action movies, but not one more than half of people take, so not one that replaces 2D. 3D TV fails, people just don’t get enough out of it to deal with wearing the glasses all the time.

    Motion tech, like others said, becomes part of each next generation platform as a selling point to casual gamers and something that maybe 10-15% of games use. Not bad to break out for the occasional party game.

    Mobile gaming will expand if only because smartphone use is currently exploding around the world. I predict a larger handful of Angry Birds-style strategy-ish successes in 2011 but nothing mindblowing. For more action-oriented games, wait until 2012 when the tablet invasion begins in earnest.

  • SWTOR Will do O.K, no WoW killer.
    GW2 Will do a little bit better than O.K.
    DAoC2, Not yet…
    D3 Will do well, with some juicy neat Bnet features.

    Hurm, and… Blizzard will announce Titan at the 4th quarter, and contrary to popular belief it is based on an existing IP, its just that if Blizzard would publicly go out and confirm that everyone would instantly know what it is.

    Happy new year!

  • Let me cut to the chase:

    GW2 – Will be a boring, over-instanced ratrace like the first one

    DAOC 2 – Probably has the best chance here in terms of PvP and engaging gameplay.

    RIFT – It’s WOW, with differet named cities, mobs, spells — oh and “Rifts” that don’t actually threaten anything real.

    SW:TOR – I think has potential to be very successful. It’s Star Wars, it’s BioWare, it’s an MMO; if they make it fun and engaging, it’s a win/win situation.

    A SEQUEL TO UO? – Would be the Absolute best thing, if only we were so lucky.

  • While I would love nothing more than to see DAoC 2, I think the death of Warhammer Online is being called prematurely (by a lot of people).

    I played at launch and, like everyone else, left after 30 days. After almost two years away, I recently resubscribed back in December, and I’ve been having a ton of fun — the PvP really is quite satisfying, with a lot of quality small-squad tactics involved. There seems to be a lot of people coming back, too — and not just in the F2P Tier 1.

    Admittedly, I had a 30-day gamecard sitting around unused and figured I should use it lest the game shut down without me having used it — but I’m glad I did. I even anticipate resubscribing again when my 30 days are up!

    If it does shut down, then it’d be a real waste of potential. There’s a AAA-quality game there, but it just didn’t get the time, money or attention necessary to work out all the kinks before it launched. If EA/Mythic does end up making a DAoC 2, then they could use the core engine from WAR and be 70% of the way there without having spent much money.

    All that said, they should have gone with three realms. The biggest issue that I see at the moment is gross population imbalances between realms! RvR is less fun when you’re constantly outnumbered 5:1.

  • WOW all the hate on guild wars 2. Just to let you know that gw1 is the 7th top selling pc video game of all time. Had the best launch of any mmo type game i ever played.

    DCUO will do great but the mmo gamers will fail at it cuz of the combos they like there auto attack wait hit spell type games.

    SWTOR is wow in space lol

    So when any other mmo besides wow gets in the top 10 of best selling video games then talk but says GW only sold alittle is plain dumb