Might & Magic Creator Joins Garriott At NCSoft

Thanks to Google News for its link to the press release announcing Jon Van Caneghem, founder of New World Computing, has been hired by MMO developer NCSoft to work as "executive producer... on a new, unannounced online game project." As the release notes, Van Canegham "created the Might and Magic and Heroes series and turned them into two of the industry's most successful titles, with more than 20 million units in combined sales", and following the dissolution of New World Computing due to owner 3DO's collapse, and the sale of the Might and Magic franchise to UbiSoft, he'll be "working with [Ultima creator, Tabula Rasa developer, and NCSoft Austin head] Richard Garriott and NCsoft's... designers to create the next generation of massively multiplayer online games."

Re:Lame

[JasdonLe]

Boring, maybe, but MMORPGs DEPSERATELY need some fresh ideas. Caneghem might be just the man for the job, especially hooked up with Garriot. Sounds like a good team to me and I personally can't wait to see what they come up with.

Sigh, the uninformed lined up to respond to this..

[schild]

Comeon guys, if you honestly think NCSoft is the devil you have your hat on backwards. First of all, this addition to Garriots team is largely positive. NCSoft is doing something that no other companies are willing to do in the MMOG market - diversify.

Between Auto Assault, City of Heroes, Tabula Rasa, Alter Life, Lineage 2, and Guild Wars - NCSoft is hitting all the bases with their titles. They have EQ Clones, car combat, diablo type rpg, the Korean Treadmill, and superhero city fighting.

Complaining about NCSoft shows nothing but a complete lack of knowledge when it comes to the MMO Market. Next time just keep your mouth shut and do some research.

Here we go again

[obeythefist]

If it's not consoles sucking all the decent programmers out of the PC gaming platform, it's the MMORPG's.

I like RPG's fine, I play a lot of them myself, I used to MUD for like two years, but eventually you realise you just can't stay on the leveling treadmill forever.

I guess PC game publishers have realised that PC games aren't the 5 minute wonders that console games are. Now they're going the other way - they don't want you for 5 minutes, they want you for life. And that's fine because they can charge you a subscription fee! What's the cost of running a counterstrike server compared to one of these MMORPGs? It's the same! And yet they have managed to charge people a fee for providing the same service.

So publishers are now angling for either a console release, or a subscription MMORPG. I'm not sure if there will be any PC games worth playing that fit into either model!

Re:Here we go again

[Psychochild]

What's the cost of running a counterstrike server compared to one of these MMORPGs? It's the same! And yet they have managed to charge people a fee for providing the same service.

Uh, not really. I run my own online game, Meridian 59 [meridian59.com], and I know what it costs to run a server.

Although we keep costs as low as possible, it does cost quite a bit to keep the server connected. Players will use a lot of bandwidth when you're talking about a few thousand people all on at the same time. Keeping the server up also costs money for support in case some router decides it doesn't want to work overnight. (People get really cranky about the service going down if they're paying you.)

On the flip side, running a FPS server at that level of availability isn't exactly cheap, either. Consider the prices at this site [fragism.com]; they do "professsional" hosting of FPS servers and charge between $5-10 per person for that. Considering the depth an online RPG provides, and the fact that regular updates are provided, a game like my own that only charges $10.95 is a pretty good deal. (Meridian 59 doesn't require an up-front box purchase, so it's an even better deal than usual.)

As for the topic on hand, I worked at 3DO for a while and remember JVC's interesting email commentary to some of the events there. I hope he finds a place where he can get good creative freedom and make some great games.

Have fun,

Re:Here we go again

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the cost of running a counterstrike server compared to one of these MMORPGs? It's the same! And yet they have managed to charge people a fee for providing the same service.

I don't see how anyone could mod you insightful, if only for that single line. A counterstrike server can run on a dual 800mhz machine in some guy's basement. A MMPORPG server has to combine several different things: Login, Gameplay, Character Storage, Ticketed Help System, and many other things.

Simply being able to handle 1000+ players on a single server is more than any CS can claim. Just being able to have that many people connect to your server (usually MMPOGs are server farms - not individual servers, but several servers networked together) dictates that your server reside in a datacenter, space at which is anything but cheap.

And that's just the gameplay. Think about a central login server, a billing server, a webserver, a patch server, and you're easily spending well over and beyond what just about anyone who runs a CS server could afford. This is why monthly subscription is a reality - not only do they have to pay for space and bandwidth, but they need to pay (at a very low wage) their online support personell (aka GMs), and their "Live Team" - a team of developers who generate new content for the servers, usually in the form of events and class/creature balance.