Why?

Because that way you could get a lot of people back that you lost after the first couple of months, like in the case of TR, I mean, it is a business after all not just fun and games.

But that wasn’t what you asked right, I will say that I would stay with the game if it was able
to grab me, keep me entertained and not make me wish I wasted my time once it was over. I mean, I’ve paid more money for much less!

oh wait!

you mean if the game has a year to live?

Ok, nevemind, move along.

Really though, this is one reason I am side stepping Star Trek Online. It seems rushed and from hints from beta testers (you beta people are testers not players!), I fear it is doomed for an early failure.

But a second reading game me the correct question. And my answer is the same as I’d give to the wrongly interpreted question. Yes.

If the game is fun, then why not play it for as long as I can, despite the availability of it or myself in twelve months?

I hung around for the final day of Tabula Rasa and Hellgate: London and it was a good experience overall. I wish I’d stuck with Asheron’s Call 2 to see it through its trials and tribulations. I really did like the world and its feel they created, and reading the KTR article of its last day puts a twinge in my heart that I wasn’t there.

Other games like MxO, etc. never appealed to me anyway, so even knowing it would get canceled (and I think everyone knew MxO was on borrowed time, Station Pass or no) wasn’t enough to get me in the game.

I suspect WAR is now on borrowed time, simply because this is EA we’re talking about. They want big numbers or they don’t want anything. It wouldn’t surprise me to see Mythic shuttered after this, now that they’re owned, just like Microsoft killed off Ensemble.

But yeah, I’d jump into an appealing MMO whose head was on the chopping block. Let’s be really, really honest with ourselves: too many of us bloggers get all self-righteous and say things like “ooooh, MMO’s require commitment on so many levels and I won’t play one that’s being canceled in a year because I’ll lose all my commitment.” Meanwhile these exact same bloggers are those MMO Tourists who can’t “commit” to any MMO for more than a month or three anyway.

But of course, as Murphy would have it, my luck would be this is an MMO I could love long-term and its unfortunate demise before I was ready would be bittersweet.

I think the bigger question though is… why would a company invest all that it takes to produce an MMO, and have it be so poor quality that a year life-span is all they could expect? That seems like bad business to me. I’d prefer to see producers either go back to writing good small-group campaign games like Dragon Age would be if it were multi-player, or really step up to where the bar has been raised on MMOG’s, expecting your game to grab the hearts of players like WoW and EQ/EQ2 have done. Or is that now too much to expect? No one can finance that kind of endeavor any longer except the known players (Blizzard/EA/Sony)?

If I were one of those with lots of spare time to play, and I could reasonably anticipate blazing through the content in 8 months or so, sure, I’d jump on board. Big “if”, though.

I think the success of DDO going to a f2p type model could mean that some subscription based MMO’s might do the same instead of just being closed down for good. That’s my hope anyway.