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Role Playing (Games)

MMOGs Shift Gears, Online Crime Up 30

Posted by Zonk from the moving-away-from-elfy-welfies dept.
Next Generation has a pair of articles about the Massive scene today. One is an interview with NCSoft's Ryan Seabury about the company's shift away from the fantasy genre, and the other a short piece stating that in-game crime is on the rise in Japan as the popularity of MMOs continues to rise. From the NCSoft article: "There's a distinct lack of an online home for the wider action gaming crowd in the MMOG arena today. Although we've seen a general trend towards more action and more mainstream gaming in MMOs, still nothing is in the same league as your typical team based FPS style gameplay. We want to provide that home to the masses of action gamers out there, looking for over-the-top action. Our core gameplay mechanic and pace attracts the action gamer, but we subversively immerse them deeper into the world as they play, via the fiction, the item hunting, the crafting, the vehicle customization, the arenas, and so on."
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MMOGs Shift Gears, Online Crime Up More

MMOGs Shift Gears, Online Crime Up

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  • MMOFPS (Score:3, Informative)

    by Asgard ( 60200 ) * <jhmartin-s-5f7bbb@toger.us> on Wednesday September 07, 2005 @06:40PM (#13504332) Homepage
    If you are looking for a MMOFPS, try out Planetside [sony.com]. There is also another one called Huxley [webzen.co.kr] supposedly coming out late next year.
    • Wait, Planetside...Didn't that game, you know,

      Suck?
      • Nope, it was actually really fun. Just priced poorly. They wanted to charge the 'regular' $13/month for a game that was worth, maybe $8. I played for about 1.5 months in the beta, and then for a almost 6 months after launch. I had to leave because I didn't feel I was getting a good value for my money.
        • It also got boring and had some broken game mechanics where you gained more by cooperating with the enemy to make big battles rather than by taking territory from them.
      • It was pretty good, but the content additions turned out to be less then exciting, so the drive to fight over the same bases in the same places on the same terrain evaporated. At a lower price it'd be worth it, but as a full price-per-month MMO one feels the need to play it all the time, and it doesn't grow enough to keep one's interest.

      • Re:MMOFPS (Score:2, Interesting)

        by fistfullast33l ( 819270 )
        Planetside is a game that is very team-based. If you're involved in a good Outfit that likes to play in an organized style, and their style is fun, then you're probably going to enjoy yourself.

        If you just run around in a tank and blow stuff up without a care in the world, the game is definitely going to get boring after a while.

        Fortunately, the game has enough of a dedicated following to sustain it for the time being. An obvious indication of this is the in-game advertising. SOE obviously has enough of an
      • It really did. I joined up with the beta expecting the sort of thing that Halo originally promised. It was a certain amount of fun, but the game lacked depth. Unfortunately, this was the least of their problems. By the time it hit retail, it was still beyond bug-ridden, and the character/vehicle control was wretched. About a half year ago, I noticed that Sony was offering a free week/month/whatever of play, so I hopped back on the bandwagon, expecting a somewhat more polished game. Instead, I was met wi
  • Yeah, half the story was just an add for NC...
    • Well, for a produt that has been delayed [theinquirer.net], (and "praised" for delays...), they've got the unenviable position of having started the marketing machine. They've now got to sustain a buzz until the spring.

      "Autoduel"-style games are great, and much needed, but the particular implementation will have to be seen.
      MMP FPSs have been around for some time, contrary to popular belief. Heck, even that train-wreck of a release World War Two Online [wwiionline.com] is still around with a devoted following (disclosure: I am not a followe
  • I don't get it.
    • It does kinda seem like something the game administrators should have some control over, doesn't it?
    • Read the smeggin' article.

      He said he'd illegally accessed a game (unnamed) using the password of a female user. He transferred goods from her account to his own on 11 occasions adding items to his character at the expense of hers.

      Unlike the recent article about someone PKing with a bot, this is obviously a crime.

      • Yeah, I couldn't help but laugh at that article. Maybe it could have been considered griefing (and obviously cheating), but it's not as if the game creators have no hand in a player's ability to steal items - given in games like Lineage/Lineage II, it's a definite aspect of gameplay, and karma based in Lineage II. Can't remember the article entirely, but it left me with the feeling that the writer didn't know this, and assumed features needed to be coded out instead of being coded in (having to write code
    • In other news online crime rate in Japan has increased 10 fold in one year. Offline crime rate remains the lowest in the world.

    • I assume they are referring to hacking to steal game accounts, not necessarily stealing in-game items (besides, some games allow you to play a thief/bandit).
  • Isn't the intended audience for an MMOFPS already feeding the monkey on their backs with stuff like XBoX Live and Halo2? I could be wrong but I'd think you'd have to offer something truly amazing to lure people over from their LAN and Halo parties.

    But, then again, IANAM(arketing)D(roid).

    • Re:XBoX Live? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What Halo2 can't do is the element that turns an FPS from running around and shooting at things into a war: Larger objectives. The maps are always the same, the two teams are trying to do similiar things, or one team is always trying to do something and the other is always trying to stop them.

      With an (Ideal) MMOFPS you might have a single unified map tens or even hundreds of miles across, with some sort of 'teleporter' system that can move you close to your team's front lines in a few moments. From there
  • the only way to win is not to play.

    seriously, that's one of the big reasons i stopped playing online games. the rampant cheating and cracking. not to mention all the rude foul-mouthed teenagers, "team-killers", people whose only reason to play was to screw others, etc etc.

    and there's not a damn thing anyone can do about it. even in pay for play MOGs, there's a ton of cheating and the above going on.

    it isn't worth the aggrivation. if you can find a group of players... well that's good for you. i was never ab
    • I think that many MMORPGs could make themselves more fun just by installing a one-on-one mentoring system. Basically instead of having guild halls where you can change classes you have to find someone to apprentice you. You could have some rare items that GIVE a class title, but they would be difficult to get, and would mostly be sougth by the devoted solo hunters, and the vain.

      Both the apprentice, and the higher level teacher gain bonus exp when they are online in the same map at the same time. Limit this
    • Well, honestly, try Planetside for the perfect counter-example to that.

      E.g., in Planetside, there is no money, hence no farming or stealing or whatever. (You're a soldier, you get your equipment for free from your base. But because you're a soldier, you can only get equipment you're certified for. Your "assets" are your certifications, which noone can steal from you, farm, or sell on ebay.)

      Now I'm not saying it's necessarily your genre or that you should join PS. I'm just saying that it's an example that no
      • so there isn't rampant botting and farming?

        it's interesting that botters and farmers have access to lots of cd keys...

        • Re:Actually, Planetside has none of those problems (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Moraelin ( 679338 ) on Thursday September 08, 2005 @12:34AM (#13506474) Journal
          Well, ok, I'll give WoW that. It does have farming, though you probably realize that you don't really have to compete with that. The only way you'd end up in direct competition with those is if you too planned to sell gold on eBay, but I'm thinking you didn't.

          What you accused it of, however is rampant cheating, cracking, and scamming. I can tell you firsthand that it's not the case.

          The quip about having access to lots of CD keys, I'm not even sure what to make of it. They have access to the keys they bought, and that's that. Even if you told someone your CD key (but not many people are stupid enough to do that), once you've already used it to open an account, it's not usable again. So it would be of exactly zero use to anyone.

          Look, I'm not saying you should play WoW or whatever. If it's not your favourite genre, fair enough, you're better off playing something else.

          Noone's forcing you to play it, so you don't have to invent completely bogus problems to talk your way out. Just don't play it if you don't want to, and that's that.

          Or to put it otherwise, no offense, but please stick to stuff you've actually played and problems you've actually experienced when you want to complain about something. You're so far off the mark, that it's like reading someone complaining about sniper-camping in Leisuresuit Larry, or about the selection of racing cars in Quake 3.
          • no i've played my share and i got sick of it.

            i've seen tons of people complain about it... but they can't do anything about it except stop playing.

            no i haven't played WoW but it's an online game, a MOG at that... with thousands of "entrepreneurs" who destroy the ability to play cheat, cracker, and a**hole free. it's a common problem in all online games. it's in quake and fps games, though not in the exact same way.

            sure there are people who play and enjoy. that's fine. i'm simply saying i've had enough of th
            • Actually, I'm not even playing WoW any more, but I find it surrealistic to basically extrapolate "WoW is a MMO, some other MMOs have been ruined by cheats and hacks, therefore WoW is ruined by cheats and hacks too." It's a textbook fallacy. It's as bogus as saying "Need For Soeed is a computer game, some computer games are FPS, therefore NFS is a FPS."

              The thing about keyloggers again, you're extrapolating things you know from other games (e.g., FPS games where that CD key is your only identification) to som
              • i didn't say WoW was as bad as others but to make it appear as if it doesn't have it's share of problems like the aforementioned is plain incorrect. i've heard and read complaints from players. there are degrees. online games have jerks and cheaters on them, MMOGs even more so, then WoW will have its share of problems too. what's fallacious about that? i didn't mention to what degree but that wasn't central to my point.

                but please don't get rude just because i spoke ill of a game you like.
                • It's not whether I like it or not (as I've said, I don't even play it any more), and it's not like it doesn't have its own real problems (yes, it has its own, completely different, problems.)

                  But you're making some specific claims as if they were hard facts, on issues you're simply not informed enough to talk about. They're just stuff you assume, imagine or extrapolate from completely unrelated games and genres. (E.g., that since stealing CD keys works in Counter-Strike, it surely must work in WoW too. When
          • it's like reading someone complaining about sniper-camping in Leisuresuit Larry, or about the selection of racing cars in Quake 3.

            Those cars did suck man.

  • Blah blah MMOG crime blah (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Red Flayer ( 890720 ) on Thursday September 08, 2005 @09:42AM (#13508777) Journal
    FTA: "Theft of online 'virtual' goods is on the rise in Japan, as the popularity of MMOGs increases."

    Then the article goes on to describe a single incident as anecdotal evidence of this trend. Poor reporting, headline and teaser have nothing to do with article.

    That said, the instance cited involves one player using another player's password. How did he get it?

    If she gave him the password, then it does not excuse his behavior, but she messed up.

    If he cracked her password, then that's a different story.

    But really, online goods, if they have real-world value, need to be protected. Secure passwords, etc. Do you let your kids leave their YuGiOh cards unattended at the mall?

    The answer, to me, is to not let your kids play games that you can't trust to protect your property.

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