New Years Predictions for 2019

The start of a new year is always heralded by resolutions and predictions and, while I am no good at resolutions… I’m old and I am unlikely to change… I am certainly willing to throw my hat in the ring when it comes to predictions.  I’m no good at those either, but since they don’t require me to lose weight or be a better person I’m game.

2019 banner provided by my daughter, who basically used her favorite EVE Online screen shot this year.

For those who are keen to see my past attempts… or are bored and looking for something to do today… my record of new year’s predictions are here, complete with results:

• 2008 – Predictions (silly, mostly wrong)
• 2009 – Predictions (mostly silly, mostly wrong)
• 2010 – Predictions (lots of bullet points, mostly wrong)
• 2011 – Demands (mostly unmet)
• 2012 – Questions (mostly unanswered)
• 2013 – Goals (mostly unfulfilled)
• 2014 – Predictions (serious, mostly wrong again)
• 2015 – Predictions (serious, mostly wrong as usual)
• 2016 – Predictions (serious-ish, mostly wrong)
• 2017 – Predictions (more wrong than usual)
• 2018 – Predictions (serious and maybe less wrong than usual)

I will add in my usual disclaimer up front.

My predicting something is not the same as my wanting something to happen.  Well, at least when it is bad.  I don’t want studios to fold, games to shut down, or Derek Smart to be right about Star Citizen.  It is more a matter of looking at the world and making a guess at how things will look on December 1st, the cut off date for all of my predictions.  Inevitably there will be some good and some bad that happens, and some of it will be visible in advance even to me.

Also, I tend to go a bit over the top simply because that is more fun than “not much will change really.”

The usual prediction rules apply.  Each prediction is worth ten points unless otherwise noted, with partial credit available.  Predictions should be written in a style that will make scoring easy and obvious eleven months down the road, but won’t be because about three predictions in I will forget that and veer off into vague, hand waving trends that are pretty much impossible to pin down.  All I can promise is that I will grade myself poorly on poorly written predictions.

So off we go.

1 – Early Classic Date

WoW Classic will launch on May 28, 2019.  As is the standard for this sort of guess at a date, I knock off 2 points for every week I am off.  That is about as concrete and clearly defined as a prediction can possibly be.  The early date will be to coincide with the end of the six month subscriptions that Blizz sold back in the fall as Battle for Azeroth isn’t holding people otherwise.

2 – Classic Rush

The WoW Classic launch will be 2004 all over again.  There confluence of nostalgia and the end of the Battle for Azeroth expansion will conspire to cause WoW Classic to overflow quickly.  There won’t be enough servers leading to long queues to get on to the servers available.  This will lead to new servers being spun up and the classic server split routine from back in the day.  Blizzard will publicly compare the day one WoW Classic crowds to how things went at the WoW launch in 2004.

3 – Classic Plans

By the time BlizzCon roles around… we’ll get to BlizzCon itself in a bit… there will be a panel, or at least a mention in the keynote, about WoW Classic and moving on from vanilla into some of the early expansions.  How to do an expansion like The Burning Crusade without necessarily progressing the vanilla servers will be a key point of contention, with transfers and boosts straight to level 60 being discussed.

4 – Classic Acceleration

By September 1, 2019 the WoW Classic rush will be over.  As we have seen time and again, the initial pile-on to play on a nostalgia server peaks pretty quickly as players, familiar with the old game and reliving their experience, move much more quickly through the game than back in the day.  This will lead to complaints about dead servers and calls for server merges or free transfers.  This will be even worse if Blizz goes full purist mode and doesn’t use the sharding tech that allows more people to use a single zone/server.

5 – Next WoW Live Expansion

The early launch of WoW Classic to cover the Battle for Azeroth collapse will mess with the Blizzard’s timing the way that Warlords of Draenor did.  Look for Blizz to cover their sagging Q2 2019 earnings by announcing the next expansion in August, just after Activision releases their quarterly earnings report.

6 – The Long BlizzCon

There will be a BlizzCon 2019 on November 8 and 9.  The main stage will be taken over by new titles as Blizzard announces no fewer that five projects.  Three of them will be mobile titles and an actual PC Diablo franchise game will be another.  However, a Diablo II remaster will go missing yet again.

7 – Full Steam Ahead

Expect Steam to stay strong despite Epic, Discord, and Amazon trying to undermine it with better deals for developers.  Steam can and will play that game while carrying on as the one stop shop for all games PC.  Devs won’t get as big of a cut on Steam, but the installed base and success stories will keep any but the biggest studios from cutting ties.

8 – All Things PlanetSlide

PlanetSide Arena will launch… or go into early access or whatever… as planned at the end of January.  It will sell some boxes and make Daybreak some quick money.  But it isn’t going to steal back the Battle Royale market for the company.  Before spring turns to summer it will be showing peak numbers on Steam down near the H1Z1 end of the spectrum, lagging far behind PUBG and nowhere close to whatever Fortnite will report on its own.

9 – Sayonara Norrath

I am going to go with the Prophecy of May and say that this will be a fateful anniversary year for EverQuest titles.  The 15th anniversary for EverQuest II and the 20th anniversary for EverQuest will see both titles celebrated, given special new content, and then put in what will be effectively maintenance mode.

10 – NantGo Away, I’m No Good For You

The NantG Mobile joint venture between Daybreak and NantWorks will deliver on none of its promises.  They’ll keep H1Z1 alive, but there won’t be any new Z1 Battle Royale (unless they just straight up rename H1Z1), there won’t be any new esports league, there won’t be an esports venue next to the LA Times, and there won’t be any mobile version of Z1 Battle Royale, and there won’t be any hint, word, or anything about any EverQuest game, mobile or otherwise.

11 – Something Has Gotta Daybreak

All of this is going to add up to hard times at Daybreak.  By December 1, 2019 it won’t be the company it was on January 1, if it exists at all.  It will either be acquired wholesale by another company or be parted out, with somebody like Gamigo taking the the three traditional MMORPGs (EverQuest, EverQuest II, and DC Universe Online) while the rest either tried to stand alone with the what I will call “the children of PlanetSide” or being folded into the NantWorks joint venture.  I’ll be writing a farewell history of the studio before the year is out.

12 – Standing Alone Games

Standing Stone Games will feel the impact of Daybreak’s misfortune as well as the sting of losing a key LOTRO developer.  They will carry through the first half of 2019 on momentum, but the latter half will leave people wondering what is up as they scramble to fill the void that Daybreak’s collapse will leave on their marketing/publishing front.  The company will soldier on, but you won’t be getting anything like a 64-bit client from them.

13 – Non-Shippers

The following titles won’t ship in 2019, defining “ship” as being available for sale with having to hide their unfinished state behind terms like “early access,” “beta,” “alpha,” or anything that falls into that realm.  2 Points per title on this one.

• Squadron 42 (forget Star Citizen overall, that one is just a gimme)
• Camelot Unchained (beta would be a step forward)
• Atlas (ARK all over again)
• Torchlight Frontiers (beta will be enough for the hype to turn to whines)
• Crowfall (a relative babe in crowdfunding years)

14 – CCP Anomalous

The ISK problem in New Eden will be one of CCPs targets for 2019, so expect null sec anomalies and the rats that infest them to change to try and slow down the titan and super gravy train while not stomping too hard on the line members in the VNIs.  Mining, however, will remain unchanged.  Ore doesn’t bring ISK into the economy and should be self regulating based on price.  It isn’t, but it should be.

15 – High Sec Changes

The War Dec changes will lead CCP to change up how suicide ganking works as well.  Right now it is too by the numbers, a solved problem for most cases.  CCP doesn’t want high sec to be safe, but right now the gankers kill with impunity and need a shake up.

16 – Low Sec Attention Span

CCP has to do something radical for low sec in general and faction warfare specifically.  My guess is that low sec will continued to be screwed in general, but that CCP will decide they need to greatly restrict, if not outright ban, the deployment of Upwell structures in FW space.

17 – CSM XIV

CCP will change up the election process yet again, trying to get the candidate list out further before the actual elections, but it will be for naught.  Eight of ten seats will still go to null sec alliances.

18 – POS Bash

Player Owned Starbases, already left with little relevance in the game, will see their end come June, when CCP finally pulls them from the game, symbolically burning the source code on the summer solstice.  And so will go the POS, long a staple of the game.

19 – Key FOB

The POS announcement will come earlier as part of CCP introducing a new Upwell structure, the player forward operating base.  The FOB will be something akin to a corp/alliance sized mobile depot that will allow players to repair, refit, and resupply.  It will lack tethering or defenses and, give how cheap a Raitaru is, will barely get used.

20 – 3DS Exit

Nintendo, after paring down the platform releases to almost nothing, will announce the end of their long running handheld line.  They will cease manufacture, blow out the last units, and throw themselves fully onto the Switch.  It will be the end of the Pokemon era.  Pokemon will just be another game, not something that made a platform worthwhile.

21 – MADE Pirates

Pirates of the Burning Seas will end up being the first MMORPG to make it into The Museum of Digital Art and Entertainment.  The unique state of its current ownership will create a situation where the game will actually be preserved, mostly because it won’t survive on its own.  And that will be it.  The games people ache to see enshrined, SWG or CoH, will never get there.  The only possible entrants will be games so small and unknown that few will notice.  So The Saga of Ryzom will be a possibility.  The MADE should work on preserving MUDs.  That is something they could make happen.

22 – Shlock Boxes

No wide spread change to the legal status of lockboxes or the selling of power or pay to win.  Some small jurisdictions might try to put something in place, as happened in 2018, but nothing will go in that will change the bottom line.  There simply isn’t a political power block against this sort of thing that could make any difference for politicians.  At best it will be used as a political football to try and divert attention away from other things.  For example, the NRA doesn’t care about video games… until there is yet another mass shooting, at which point they need something to blame.  More of that.

23 – A Prime New World

Amazon’s survival sandbox whatever MMORPG New World won’t be ready in 2019, but the company will announce special benefits for Prime members when the game does launch.  I hope it will be something more than expedited delivery from the in-game version of Whole Foods.

24 – Behindcraft

While Microsoft and Mojang haven’t given up on Minecraft – Java Edition, which is the Mac, PC, and Linux version of Minecraft that lacks a cash shop, it has clearly slowed down development.  The rest of Minecraft has pandas and new cats and stuff while Java is getting development snapshots still.  This trend will continue as the Java code base won’t release the panda update until March and that will be the only update to be released for Java in 2019.

25 – Avatar’s Shroud

Shroud of the Avatar will see further constrictions, if not an outright closure, in 2019.  Like most early access games, it used up the goodwill of all but the most dedicated fans as it was being built out and now nobody is left interested in buying a copy.

26 – Guild Wars 2 Continues

The pattern seems to be an expansion every could of years.  That is about as deep as my insight into the game really goes at this point.  But given that, I expect they will announce an expansion this year set for launch in 2020.

27 – Cattle Royale

As we saw the final rounds of the MOBA shake out with Blizz cutting back on Heroes of the Storm, the culling of the Battle Royale pretenders will commence in earnest.  Anybody for whom Battle Royale is just a mode tacked on to an already solid franchise, as with CS:GO, won’t have much to worry about, but anybody all-in on that alone… that isn’t Fortnite or PUBG… will be dead or dying by the end of the year.  This will be most unfortunate for the late comers that show up this year.  Also, how they hell am I even going to score this one.  See what I mean?

Bonus Wild-Ass Prediction:  Sony buys back some, if not all, of Daybreak from Jason Epstein at the bankruptcy sale at discount prices.  If Daybreak is headed for a fall, who has the most to lose?  At this point, aside from Daybreak itself, Sony makes a tidy sum on the PlayStation 4 from DC Universe Online and, for the moment, H1Z1.  Maybe they also make a bit from PlanetSide 2, but I’d be surprised at that.  20 bonus points if it comes to pass.

Double Bonus Wild-Ass Prediction: Daybreak announces a new EverQuest title, sells pre-orders, never makes it to early access, and shuts everything down without any refunds.  I want 40 bonus points if that happens.

So there it is, my guesses for 2019.  That is 270 points possible, with some extra credit bonus predictions.  Looking at them as a whole, I can see I’ve probably been too pessimistic along some lines… Daybreak can’t possibly fall that far… and too optimistic along others… like CCP has ever shown itself to be able to jungle that many balls at once… but I am going to let them stand as it.

You can tell how limited my range of games is by how few studios I feel I know enough about to even venture a guess.  Me even dipping into GW2 was a stretch, and I can’t even begin to tell you where SWTOR sits.  And then there are all the crowdfunded, kickstarted, early access games.  I just pulled five from that gaggle for the “won’t ship” list, but I could have as easily picked five others.

Anyway, that is what I am calling for 2019.  We shall see how the year plays out.  Look for a recap some time in December… or tell me what you think I missed right now.

Reviewing My 2017 Predictions

As the end of the year looms, the arbitrary line in time where we declare things to renew, it is time once again for one of the default end of year posts in which I seem to enjoy indulging.  So here is the 2017 version of prediction reviews.

For past versions of this, both predictions and results, you can consult these links:

• 2008 – Predictions (silly, mostly wrong)
• 2009 – Predictions (mostly silly, mostly wrong)
• 2010 – Predictions (lots of bullet points, mostly wrong)
• 2011 – Demands (mostly unmet)
• 2012 – Questions (mostly unanswered)
• 2013 – Goals (mostly unfulfilled)
• 2014 – Predictions (serious, mostly wrong again)
• 2015 – Predictions (serious, mostly wrong as usual)
• 2016 – Predictions (serious-ish, mostly wrong)

Way back during the waning hours of 2016 I scrambled to put together what seemed at the time to be sage and well considered thoughts as to what 2017 might bring.  I let those ideas loose and have now returned to the scene of the crime to see how they did out there in the harsh light of reality.

So what the hell did I think was going to happen in 2017?  And what was I on when I was thinking these things?

1 – Long in the Legion – Blizzard is going to use their ongoing content additions to WoW Legion as an excuse to not announce a new World of Warcraft expansion in 2017.  BlizzCon will come and go without a word about a new box and people will predict that it means the death of the game.

Well, no.  At BlizzCon they announced the Battle for Azeroth expansion with a cinematic and everything.  So there we are, the continue to conform to the “about every other year” pattern they had previously established.  0 points.

2 – Roll Credits – A second Warcraft film will be announced… for the Chinese market.  There will be no plans for a theatrical release in the West.  The announced plan will have it arriving as a dubbed straight-to-video option on the market some time in 2018.

Well, no.  No sequel has been announced in any form, China-only or otherwise.  Duncan Jones has been talking to people who ask and telling them what he would LIKE to do, but that is just so much chin music.  CCP has been talking about an EVE Online TV show as well and that doesn’t seem likely at this point either.  0 points.

3 – Really Big Storm – Blizzard is going to make radical changes to Heroes of the Storm in 2017 in an attempt to get it at least somewhere in the same market as DOTA 2 and LoL.  Different modes, different maps, and better stats will be featured, the latter accompanied by changes that will make individual contributions stand out much more.  So rather than talking about a new WoW expansion, Blizzard will be talking about this.

Well, sort of.  Blizzard came out of the gate in 2017 with that as a stated intent.  Then they made some small changes in the very conservative way Blizz can be at times, and more changes were mentioned at BlizzCon for 2018, which went live already, but there hasn’t been anything I would call radical and the game remains the also-ran in the MOBA category.  Still, better an also-ran than being shut down altogether.  4 points because some changes were made!  Twice!

4 – CEO of the Kill – I am going to re-roll last year’s prediction and say that Daybreak is going to get a new president… a real new president, not the current Columbus Nova overseer… with actual game industry experience; console or mobile experience, take your pick.

Well, no.  I mean, I guess there might have been.  But hell, Wikipedia still says that Russell Shanks is CEO, and we’re pretty sure he was replaced by Ji Ham in October of 2016, so it doesn’t seem like anybody is paying that close attention to the whole thing.  Anyway, as far as I can tell there has been no change.  0 points.

5 – More Than Just a Title – Daybreak also has a lot of positions open on its home page, which seems to indicate that they have some new project plans under way.  We will hear about the first of those projects in 2017, and the biggest shock will be lack of support for the PC platform.  In a world where Daybreak’s sweetest paying title is probably DC Universe Online on the PS4 and where Nintendo is cranking out hit after hit on mobile (or at least licensing to companies making hits for them), Windows will seem like yesterday’s market.

Well, no.  Daybreak still has a lot of positions open and there have been a few rumors very much on the down low, but publicly we’ve heard diddly divided by squat.  0 points.

6 – Milestone Really – Yesterday’s market will get smaller at Daybreak as well as they close down Landmark and the aptly named H1Z1: Just Survive.

Half right.  Landmark went down like an overused sexual metaphor back in February.  But the game now known as Just Survive has lived up to its name, surviving another year.  There is even talk of work done on it.  We shall see.  5 points.

7 – Trash Cash – The change with H1Z1: King of the Kill getting its own currency was just the start of death of Daybreak Cash good across all games.  The real money currency market at Daybreak will continue to fragment, with DCUO and PlanetSide 2 getting their own currency.  Only EverQuest, EverQuest II, and Landmark will keep Daybreak cash.  As with King of the Kill, there will be an open period where you can transfer your Daybreak cash to one of the new currencies.

Well, no.  No more new currencies and things have been awfully quiet on the current Daybreak Cash front.  0 points.

8 – My Card – When the currency revamp is complete, Daybreak will launch new retail game cards for some, but not all, of the currencies.  Daybreak cash won’t get cards.

Well, no.  No new currencies and no new cards.  I was really kind of fixated on this a year back, wasn’t I?  0 points.

9 – Point Break – At Standing Stone Games, the statement about nothing changing will last for a bit, and then changes will come.  Among those will be changing Turbine Points to have new, game specific names, since you couldn’t transfer them between LOTRO and DDO in any case.

Those new currencies for SSG titles will be part of Daybreak’s currency revamp and you will be able to buy into the new currencies with Daybreak cash for a limited time.

Well, no.  Fixated is the word.  0 points.

10 – And Access for All – LOTRO and DDO will be on Daybreak All Access before the end of the year.

Well, no.  I also wanted to make something out of this SSG/Daybreak partnership, probably so it would make sense.  Daybreak is there in the LOTRO EULA and all.  0 points.

11 – Hardcore Death – NCsoft will announce the end of WildStar by the end of 2017.  Another re-roll from last year.  Yes, I know you love it, but look at the numbers the NCsoft financial statements.

Well, no.  What happened to you NCsoft?   You used to be so reliably hard hearted.  The way you’re acting now its like your distracted by something else… like mobile games maybe?  Anyway, 0 points.

12 – Cloud Imperium Crisis – Push will come to shove at the house of Star Citizen in 2017… as in the need to shove something out the door that they can sell, both to generate revenue and to establish some credibility that they can ship something.  Star Marine will end up as a stand-alone purchasable product by the end of the year.  You won’t need to buy it if you’re already invested, but it will only be available after its “launch” a la carte.

Well, no.  Cloud Imperium doesn’t have anything far enough along to sell to the general public, so it continues on with its “milk the invested” strategy, now featuring claims for virtual real estate.  It’s almost enough for some sort of P.T. Barnum award at this point.  0 points.

13 – Hello World – Hello Games will continue to quietly grind out updates for No Man’s Sky, eventually turning it into a decent single player space sim/RPG.  Game sites will re-review it and give it a positive nod.  Multiplayer however will remain a lie that will haunt the game and its developer.

Sort of.  Hello Games has been quietly grinding out updates and there are new play modes and some work done towards what they call ” synchronous co-op” and what you and I would actually call “playing with other people,” but it is still a lonely universe.  Nobody of note has bothered to re-review it, but it does get a bit of nice press now and again.  5 points.

14 – Future Gates – CCP will wait until FanFest where they will finally announce the next step in their road map forward.  The announcement will be new space.  It will be available only through one-way gates that will only allow frigate sized ships to pass and once you’re on the far side you’re stuck there.  No death clones back even.  Return will depend upon completion of a giant, dozen-keepstar level of effort project has been completed by your corp/alliance/coalition.  Said gates will not allow capital ships to pass, but you can always bring blueprints.

Well, no.  We got moon busting instead.  Maybe, some day.  0 points.

15 – PCME? PCU! – The lasting effect of the Ascension expansion will settle down to a PCU count of about 3- 5K addition players online at any given time over the pre-expansion numbers.  For a game that runs on one server that handles time zones around the globe, that adds up to a lot of additional people, but it still isn’t the heyday of 2013 and the “EVE is dying” chorus will continue sing its near constant refrain.

Maybe.  Note to self: When you make predictions like this you need to specify in the post exactly how the measurement will be done.  Maybe I had a plan a year back, but I forget.

Anyway, going to EVE Offline and looking at the twelve months before the Ascension expansion, the PCU average was ~32K.  The average PCU for 2017, the time span for the prediction, looks to be 35K.  That seems to just fit into the 3-5K range I predicted.  I’m going to give myself 10 points and move on quickly before anybody has time to contradict me.  Sorry, too late, I can’t hear you, la la la la la la la…

16 – Switcharoo – The Nintendo Switch will hit store shelves come the Fall, but the big deal for this “is it a bit handheld or a small console?” unit will be the announcement that versions of Pokemon Sun & Moon will be available for the unit, so you will finally be able to play Pokemon on your big screen TV and even stream it on Twitch or Yahoo or Facebook if you want.  But you still won’t be able to take screen shots.

Well, no.  It hit the shelves in March and despite rumors there has been been no official sign that the core Pokemon RPG franchise will ever appear on anything but the dedicated handheld Nintendo hardware, currently represented by the Nintendo 3DS and its offspring.  0 points.

17 – Let’s Hear It for the GameBoy – Following on the success of the 3DS Virtual Console versions of Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow, Nintendo will follow up with an ongoing series of legacy Pokemon titles, with the generation 2 titles of Pokemon Gold, Silver, and Crystal next up.

Yes… mostly.  We got Pokemon Gold & Silver… and Pokemon Crystal was finally announced, but we won’t get it until next month.  I’m giving myself 9 points.

18 – Forsaken Avatar – Shroud of the Avatar will finally hit its launch state and announce it is live and ready for the wide world to join in.  However, in yet another hard lesson about early access, sales won’t jump.  The core audience has already bought in and new comers will be scared off by the reviews on Steam that are the outcome of the early access run.  If it even appears on the front page of Steam’s the top seller list, it won’t stay there for very long.

Well, no.  Not really.  I mean, they are pushing the game hard in every weekly update, but they haven’t convinced me it is ready for prime time.  0 points.

19 – Not Shipping – Camelot Unchained, Crowfall, Pantheon: Rinse and Repeat, and Amazon’s New World will all be no-shows on the release market for 2017.

Okay, I had to get something right, even if it was something of a gimme.  I need more predictions like this.  10 points.

20 – Back on Track – After another year of tinkering with the game, NCsoft is going to put the screws to Arena Net and a new expansion will be announced for GuildWars 2.  That will give ANet something to talk about for months. It will also kill of any Heart of Thorns purchases given past behavior.  And, sure enough, as the new expansion gets close HoT content will become free.

Mostly right.  The core was a new expansion, which was announced and shipped.  Heart of Thorns did not go free. though there was a slight discount to buy both expansions at one point.  Still, I think the expansion was the thing.  7 points.

Extra Credit Wild Ass Guess – Daybreak hires an ex-Riot person as chief exec and announces they going to make a MOBA!  Double points if it is Norrath based!

Hahaha… no.  That I had an expectation of action from Daybreak on that one that was clearly unrealistic.  Nothing new under the sun at Daybreak.

So now it is time to add up the score and… holy crap, I believe I have hit an all time low score for predictions.  That is 50 points out of a possible 200, or a 25% success rate.  I clearly need to invest in a new crystal ball!

Either than, or just admit that my predictions are mostly speculations just to give me something to write about in a market where I don’t really care very much for anything new.  Sometimes crazy predictions are enough to make things interesting.

Anyway, with that new low I have to start thinking about 2018.  What will the new year bring?

Note to self: Remember to put in more easy ones next year.