Massively's MMO predictions for 2012: Bree Royce
Mists of Pandaria will launch this year and will actually do very well in spite of all the "waaaaaa Kung-Fu Panda" and "talent tree dumbing-down" idiocy. It won't, however, bring World of Warcraft's subscription numbers back up to peak.
Guild Wars 2 will launch and be really cool and do very well but will fail to achieve the numbers hardcore fanboys expect -- you know, just like Guild Wars did. Nothing personal, Guild Wars 2. I am still going to play you, ravenously! Hurry up please!
RIFT will go free-to-play, as will Vanguard. EA will continue to hold out on making Warhammer, Ultima Online, and Dark Age of Camelot F2P.
Lord of the Rings Online will announce another expansion. It will not be Rohan. Rohan is never coming. (OK, it had better be Rohan!)
City of Heroes 2 will be announced!
The Secret World will not come out in April as planned but rather closer to late summer or early fall. It will undergo a massive rework of basic mechanics like quests and skills just before launch and perform poorly in sales before going on to languish alongside Funcom's other games.
TERA will launch and fail to capture American audiences a la Aion. ArcheAge will launch in the West and confuse both sandbox and themepark players. SOE will reveal that EverQuest Next is the sandbox we are looking for.
Zynga will finally implode, which will remove a great deal of the stigma attached to social games and browser-based MMOs, making them more mainstream for gamers (as opposed to mainstream for non-gamers). Beau will resist saying I told you so.
Want more staff predictions for 2012? Pick a writer below:
Beau Hindman | Bree Royce | Brendan Drain | Eliot Lefebvre | Jef Reahard | Jeremy Stratton | Justin Olivetti | Shawn Schuster
