Do Online games have a shelf life?

It seems to me that online games have a viable shelf life, after which they become boring and pedantic. This is usually marked by sweeping changes and attempts at revitalizing the genre. I have seen it in other games I've played and the switch finally clicked in my head.

For those that will jump in and say no, think about this. If GW was fine as is, why make a sequel? Answer, because it's time. Either as a result of falling sales, or the code is too clunky from endless patching or the original formula is no longer working, there seems to be a natural progression that is unescapeable. To that end, it seems when we see these warning signs is it time to jump ship, and find something else?

Your thoughts?

or they just want to do more things wich the current engine is not good enough for. and i think thats why they are making gw2. they want to add more things, more freedom, etc, etc, wich the current engine cannot run so the must make a new one

Guild Wars games are very vulnerable to becoming boring for the simple reason that GW2 was started in the first place... the Guild Wars world is there to push forward a linear story, as opposed to Guild Wars 2, where they want the world to be a literal sandbox, where they can spin multiple stories and keep the game fresh.

rogh daxh & Domino, well said. You both voiced some good points I failed to illiterate.

I think it has more to do with the advancements in CPU/GPU processing power and the market average of what systems consumers are currently using or are available to broader public.

Don't think that GW2 will run on a P3 1GHz system like GW did when it was first released.

Therefore, the company needs to remain competitve with newer games that are coming soon, and that means overhauling the engine to efficiently improve the game performance and graphical immersion.

It is more cost effective to at some point, start from scratch than to try to change all the code that is currently in GW.

"It is more cost effective to at some point, start from scratch than to try to change all the code that is currently in GW."

It would be interesting to see how much legacy code is in gw2 LOL

They needed to do something to keep people interested. With the hall of monuments and getting stuff for the titles you have, people will be doing a lot of title grinding and that will keep interest in the game. Also, when GW2 comes out, GW1 will be 4 or 5 years old, which is old for any game. Say they keep the servers running for two years after that, it will have lasted 6 or 7 years, which would give it a very long life indeed.

Everything has a shelf life. Trends change. Clothes change. Entertainment changes.

Of course, MMORPGs are no different.

As for "To that end, it seems when we see these warning signs is it time to jump ship, and find something else?"

I'm not sure change is a "warning sign" or just inevitable. I don't plan on "jumping ship", at least not until something better is worth jumping to.

Games have a shelf life indeed if companies don't or can't update the content. I don't play my console games for longer than a few months because I beat them all, get bored with them, and there's no viable way for them to 'renew' them with fresh content. The developers counter that by releasing sequels to hit titles, and are able to take the lessons they learned from the previous game, good and bad, to make a better product. I'd still be playing MGS 3 if there was a way to get some updated content for the single player side (PvP didn't work for me).

Online games like GW are unique in that the developers can create and push out new content within a given framework. Users just need to download the updates and off they go. Like a few other posters ahead of me have said, the only real limitation that they face is the engine that powers the entire game. To allow our toons to jump over that small fence or over to the otherside of a switchback trail seems easy on paper, but in reality could take the additions of thousands of new lines of code, the modification of thousands more, and hundreds of hours of testing and debugging that take the finite time and attention of programmers away from other projects that might be more in line with keeping players long-term.

I do believe that Guild Wars is a success, and I believe that GW2 is just Anet's way of allowing for them to start over and do what they want now that they can do it. The GW engine itself is seven years old, as I recall, and a lot surely has changed in the programming world in that time. Domino and Rogh pretty much sum this up with their posts above there.

Mordakai wrote: "at least not until something better is worth jumping to."

Exactly, so they (GW) would/should/could expect no brand loyalty, people will go, to where they percieve they will enjoy more. Yes?

Every product has it's loyal followers that will stay with it until the very end. In some cases, even in the product's death (Some people still use Win95 ). in spite of that, successful business planners don't play heavily into brand loyalty when planning future products and services.

Where are you going with this?

Flameout, by expecting no brand loyalty it follows they could offer no customer loyalty and do as they wish. Make sense?

Is it? EA/Origin clearly don't think so, hence Ultima online is curently having a completely new graphics engine written specifically so that players don't have to "start again"

I think it's widely accepted that UO helped define most of the 'ground rules' for all the other MMORPG's that followed, so it's interesting to note that they eventually Shelved the planned Ultima Online 2 - which was originally announced as being in production at about the same time into UO's life as we are into GW now.

For those of you not familiar with UO - it has been running for 9 years!

As per the pcgamer article;

dargon, Okay so based on that article snipet, gw2 will inherit many of gw's pros and cons.. I will refrain from any further knee jerk reaction as that is not the focus of this thread.

do online games have a shelf life

yes they do, every game does hence the idea of continuous updates and expantions and chapters and bonus features...

is this the reason they changed to gw2? imo nope,
they could as well have upgraded of brought us several extra chapters before going to gw2. gw2 was possibly just a technical issue, many things they wanted could not be accomplished in gw1 style, gw1 format, gw1 engine, ...
thus logical jump to gw2 is made..

Everything has a "shelf life". You'd be deluding yourself if you thought otherwise. Anet has to continue to cater to their customers for the same reasons a shop has to cater to window-shoppers - just because they aren't buying anything right now, doesn't mean they won't later.

They are planning a sequal for 2-3 years from now - hardly a "warning sign".

The shelf life of an online game is defined by whether players are actively playing. I've picked up 12 month old FPS games in sales that are all but dead once I get online (Tribes Vengeance springs to mind). That's not the case with GW - it's clearly a very populated game (obscure outposts, in the middle of nowhere, aside).

Shelf life? Yes of course, every game has it. As long as people still play it or when developers would run out of resources to continue the server. But I don't think I can see GW 1 would die that soon. Given its innovation for this genre and the company indeed that made it is still an infant and the only product they have right now. I can say it will stay for years

My thoughts are....

....Im not bothered. I've been playing GuildWars for around 2 years now. I've played through all 3 campaigns and created about 4 maxed out characters.

I've played the game nearly everyday since buying it (ignoring the holiday I took in Azeroth).

If playing a game for 2 years is considered a bad shelf-life, then I would have to disagree. This game has lasted longer then any other game i've ever owned. Most other games last about a month and then gather dust.

Yes they have made expansions and yes its to keep people interested in playing and to incourage new players. But even if they hadnt, I expect I would still have been playing prophercies for 2 years.

All games has a shelf-life or loose their 15 minutes of fame. But thats the beauty of online games. A constant supply of new content, to keep it alive.

Online games will continue aslong as there is a fan-base, and aslong as the company behind them continues to back them up with support and improvements and new content.