The Rise of Originality In MMOs 118
Karen Hertzberg writes "Over the last half decade, gamers have been forced to wander through familiar worlds and universes. Studios have been licensing IPs left and right, grabbing everything from the Wheel of Time to Star Trek. Originality seemed to be a lost art, and although these worlds were fun to adventure in, many didn't hold the same sort of magical spell that original titles like EverQuest or Dark Age of Camelot once enjoyed. But change is coming. Blizzard Entertainment revealed that their next MMO would be an original IP, and this year's E3 lineup featured more brand new games than titles derived from existing worlds. So, why the sudden shift? To answer that question, Ten Ton Hammer's Cody 'Micajah' Bye sent a number of questions to original IP development teams across the world."
Amazing MMO "First Life" takes off (Score:5, Funny)
It's the newest social networking fad, a place of unparalleled delights and frightening possibilities. It's First Life [today.com], a new Massively Multiplayer Offline Reality Playing Game, produced by Jehovah Labs six thousand years ago and only accelerating in popularity.
While First Life is referred to as a game, it does not have points, scores, fixed levels or an end-strategy. The environment is known to players as "The Real World." As of June 2009, over six billion users are in the World at any one time. It is famous for its ultra-realistic play and its amazing high-resolution 3-D graphics, framerate and physics engine.
In First Life, you are assigned a body type. You cannot trade it up or easily change its basic characteristics, though you can outfit it in various ways.
"It's weird," said one player. "You can hardly buy cool replacement penises anywhere. But sex in First Life is amazing. It's really hard to level up to, though, and it cost me a fortune."
Many now suggest that First Life could be a passing fad, with the World being all but abandoned after a few decades. But nearly half of all Americans who belong to the First Life community claim that it is almost as important as the virtual world.
Some worry about the apparently addictive nature of First Life. The huge growth in reality gaming in the last century means a sharp increase in the numbers of people who take their passion for the hobby too far. "I know of people who are spending their week's holiday from EverQuest playing First Life. An addiction to a game like this is far more costly in time than any substance. Keep track of time, make sure your Eve Online characters don't go stale."
In the game, you can buy accessories for your character with an exchange mechanism called "money." People have started working in First Life to earn "money." Part of the addiction problem is "jobs" - in which players have to perform long-winded, mindless tasks, up to forty hours a week or even more, to bring up their levels and gain access to more adventure.
Stories of gamers spending ten to fifteen hours a day in First Life are becoming more frequent. And the impact that is having on their families is quite distressing for some. "He said that if he could spend 24 hours a day in the World, he would," sobbed the avatar of one player's mother. "His Kingdom of Loathing character's died of neglect. An Adventurer isn't Him any more."
The Archbishop of Alphaville condemned First Life's moral integrity. "Whoever designed First Life has watched too much EastEnders and read too much Tom Clancy. It's a psychosexual nightmare given virtual form, where giant flying penises are nowhere to be seen and disturbed people fail to wear even slightly less disgusting forms when having repulsive intercourse."
Re:Original? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well, there has been original IP (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Original IP? (Score:3, Funny)
I agree, this whole Intellectual Property concept has gone too far, it's more about money than about ideas these days, and that is a very sad thing cause its us customers who end up paying the big price in the end. Here are our freedoms, filled with so many cheesy products that we spend most of our time filtering through them to find a gem, that's not freedom to me, feels more like being a dog who's thrown the remains of a dinner table having to sort through it all to find meat.
On a more positive note, I since IP doesn't really mean original concept, nothing prevents Blizzard from having a WoW2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw8gE3lnpLQ [youtube.com]
Re:Amazing MMO "First Life" takes off (Score:3, Funny)
I played this a while back and it totally sucked.
Re:meh. (Score:5, Funny)
Hell, breaking a camp was almost a fine art.
Not to mention navigating complex dungeons, exploring, bringing along the right class that allowed you to actually GO there (water breathing, crowd control, etc.)
Today's MMOs are like riding the subway. One path, the people riding along probably smell, are inconsiderate, and they all looks the same.
Re:Amazing MMO "First Life" takes off (Score:3, Funny)
It's a psychosexual nightmare given virtual form, where giant flying penises are nowhere to be seen...
Actually that's not quite true [youtube.com].
(Or if you don't trust a direct link to the video just do a video search for 'flying dildo')
Re:meh. (Score:1, Funny)
Ah, so heroism by spreadsheet is is then?