Originally Posted by
BrettM
Ferrets kill for sport? Hah! Not if there's a nice, restful hammock in the vicinity, or shinies to haul off to their stash, or tunnels to run around in. Actually, ferrets imprint strongly on their food at a very young age, so it is almost impossible to get a domestic ferret to take up hunting unless they're raised for it. If a manufacturer of a commercial food even makes a small change in ingredients, ferrets imprinted on that food may stop eating entirely because they no longer recognize it as edible.
Game with no rewards, eh? Well, I came to GW1 after Uru (Myst Online) folded as a commercial venture for the second time. Most of you have never heard of Uru, I suspect, but it actually fits Alaris's question and lets us look at a real example instead of just theorycrafting about the possibility. (It actually still exists in a sort of life-support limbo, and you can still give it a try if you want to see it in operation and imagine what it was like in its all-too-brief glory days.)
Uru is an MMORPG that has no armor, weapons, combat, crafting, minigames, or any of the other features we associate with the genre. Your character can't die or kill, and there is no PvP element at all. There are persistant instanced areas owned by the player, but you can invite as many other players as you like to share your instances, so it has a more open-world feel. The only tangible rewards it offers are bits of clothing found laying around different maps as you explore and some collectable decorations for your private home area. The gameplay is pure puzzle-solving adventure story, much like single-player adventure games, coupled with dramatic content provided by interacting with "NPCs" who were played by employees of the developers in real time.
So what happened to bring about its demise? The debate among True Fans -- who are as fanatical about Uru as any Trekkie/Trekker is about ST -- goes on to this very day, but the major elements are:
1. The game never attracted an audience of viable size. I don't believe the number of players ever broke (or even bent) 100,000. This is, of course, laughable in terms of keeping the support of a publisher.
2. The format of the game simply demands a constant stream of new content, since there is not a heck of a lot to do between content releases and rare "NPC" visits except use the environment as a glorified chat room, which is not appealing to the average MMO player. However, a small studio like Cyan Worlds could never afford to produce content at the necessary rate to keep the game fresh. In fact, I doubt that even a studio like ANet or Blizzard could do so, even if they had $200 million to sink into the project. Certainly a revenue based on a $15 monthly subscription fee and 100k players would not support the necessary development even if every penny went to the studio. Thus, there was a problem in player retention except among the tiny core of True Believers.
Could such a format ever be successful? Perhaps, but it would need some changes such as the addition of a game economy and gathering/crafting. It would also likely need a publisher with the patience to let the game find its audience instead of ditching it if it doesn't have 2 million subscribers on day one. Most of the audience for a game of this type is just not going to be found among the ranks of traditional MMO players, and it would take time and creative marketing to reach out to other potential players.
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