That doesn’t mean it’s easy to build a sustainable business; many MMOs fail during the crucial 1-2 months following their launch. However, the ones that play it right have every chance of carving out a profitable niche — maybe even of taking a chunk out of the WoW pie.

Funcom’s launch of Age of Conan was successful by any measure, selling some 1 million copies. But they were soon bombarded with complaints over the instability of the client as well as numerous bugs. So while they claim to have more than 400,000 paying subscribers, that’s just 40 percent of the number of games that were sold at launch.

With that in mind, here’s a list of do’s and don’ts aimed at MMO developers and publishers preparing for that critical post-launch period:

The Do’s

• Make sure that the game is stable. Too many unfinished products are being pushed out prematurely.
• Include a significant amount of content for players of all levels, not just the initial ones, because players will advance faster than you think. If the game gets boring, they’ll leave.
• Add new content on a regular basis — frequent, small chunks at first, to really show commitment.
• Make it easy for players to network, form guilds, go on raids, or whatever is fitting for your MMO. Remember, these are social games, after all.
• Let players move characters between servers. This option should be there from the start, so that you can join your friends playing on other servers without having to start with a new character from scratch on that particular server.
• Keep an open dialogue with the players via forums and blogs, and listen to their suggestions. This not only makes it easier for you to improve your game, it also looks good for curious would-be players, and might prove to be a selling point.

The Don’ts

• Don’t promise features that are months away. It doesn’t matter how amazing your new PvP system is, it’s frustrating to hear about features of a brand-new game that will involve still more waiting.
• Avoid having apparent portals and exits to parts of the world that you haven’t made available yet. Limit the world in a seamless manner.
• Don’t rebalance the game too much, too fast. Players pick their classes, skills, weapons and armor after the framework you’ve given them, so when you alter something drastically you’re essentially breaking their characters.
• When gamers start to complain, don’t just ignore them and fix the issues in secret. Publicly acknowledging problems makes you more credible and inspires another level of loyalty — as long as you follow through with them, that is.

Image courtesy of Age of Conan.

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These are uncharted waters for Apple, a company that hasn’t historically been game-friendly. Now, of course, they have something that both Nintendo and Sony surely envy: the direct distribution channel of the App store. Rather than ordering a game online and waiting for it to be delivered, or visiting a physical store to pick it up, consumers can buy and be playing games on their iPod touches and iPhones with a mere few clicks. Nintendo doesn’t offer this at all, and Sony’s efforts through PlayStation Network are medicore at best. Cutting out the middlemen not only means more money for Apple, but also for the games publishers and developers — so ostensibly, everyone wins.

But for gamers, usability is key. And while the big screens and fairly powerful hardware found on Apple’s latest devices sure can make things look good, their touch screens are limiting, game play-wise. Just look at the Nintendo DS, a touch screen device that has proven very popular, but one that includes both a stylus and directional pad, as well as opposite buttons, to back it up. Apple’s devices lack both. And “pushing” a touch screen-rendered button is a far different experience than that of pressing an actual button.

So far the hardware hasn’t scared off publishers. There are already several heavyweight publishers with games in the App store, with more to come. Sega has Super Monkey Ball, and Electronic Arts just launched Spore Origins. Gameloft, which is known for their mobile phone games, has Asphalt 4 and Real Soccer 2009; and Vivendi Games Mobile didn’t waste any time getting their Crash Bandicoot’s face in there, in a family-oriented 3D go-kart game at that. Add classics like Pac-Man from Namco Bandai, and revamped versions of the classics, like Bomberman Touch from Hudson Soft, and you’ve got a pretty strong lineup. Problem is, these games are available on other formats as well. And the conversion of games originally developed for the competing formats will mean poor optimization, and frustrated gamers. What Apple needs are original titles optimized for its devices, key titles that aren’t available elsewhere.

Another stumbling block for Apple is pricing. Your basic PSP system starts at around $170, and the Nintendo DS is at $130 or so. The 8GB iPod touch, meanwhile, the cheapest of the two Apple devices, sells for $229. And it’s not available to try in game stores.

Nintendo and Sony can sleep soundly, at least for now. While Apple can expect publisher support thanks to the App store model, in order to truly distinguish themselves, they’ll have to offer something original, something that neither Sony nor Nintendo can offer on their own, well-entrenched portable devices. (Ideally, they’d snare Blizzard to make an exclusive World of Warcraft client available; with its reach beyond traditional gamers, it could be the killer app.) And those titles will have to truly make use of Apple’s devices in order to convince gamers that they are, in fact, the best ones on which to play games. Until then, Apple should retreat from this battle.

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