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Role Playing (Games) Editorial

Year in MMORPGs Reviewed 48

Posted by Zonk from the i-was-going-to-write-this-and-now-i-don't-have-to dept.
Grimwell.com has an excellent piece on the past year in the MMORPG scene. It highlights the best, worst, and in-between as regards Massively Multiplayer Online Games. From the article: "I have never played so many different MMORPGs in one year before. This is one of the defining features of 2004: an abundance of choice in the MMORPG market like never before. While a few games, like Earth and Beyond and minor independent ones, closed their servers, most games from previous years are still available."
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Year in MMORPGs Reviewed More

Year in MMORPGs Reviewed

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  • Multi-mode games? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by BumbaCLot ( 472046 )
    I played Earth and Beyond, it was my first MMORPG (Galaxies was my second), and I really liked the inside-space ship vs character walking around in a spaceport modes. Eve I saw you did not have the freedom to get out of your ship, you were just a picture inside of your interface. I know SWG has ships now that I no longer play it but are there any other games where you have a ship for most of the game and can walk around outside of it for the other times?
    • How is this a troll and the post before it insightful?

      Do people even read the comments they moderate?
    • Planetside might be considered like that, although it's not a MMORPG. You have the freedom to get around any way you want, including in vehicles.

      Earth and Beyond's was nice, but it would have been nicer if you were able to do more stuff when you were out of your ship. IE if there was a whole other "game world" to explore on foot.

      As much as the game was a flop, primarily (IMO) due to it having no in-game tutorial, poor controls, and a producer with a self-bought PhD, and the game was not a MMORPG or MMO an
      • I know SWG has 'mounts' and I have not really looked into how its Space Expansion's ships are docked etc.. but I did like in E&B how you could be identified by others by your ship hanging out in space. I only played EVE in the beta, so I don't have a full grasp of what different ships looked like or how you identify people other than clicking on them, but I will always like space type MMORPGs that allow you to have customizable and recognizable ships that could inspire fear or well-being. Being under at

  • Many new games, none of them really new. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Golias ( 176380 ) on Monday December 20, 2004 @02:02PM (#11139036)
    I enjoyed City of Heroes for a while, because I liked the genre, but it still ended up being "Everquest in tights." One oddity of CoH was that, like most MMORPGs, it gave no experience or rewards for defeating low-level opponents with a high-level character, so you ended up having hundreds of "heroes" in mighty-looking capes casually jogging by as old ladies getting mugged were screaming for help.

    I now play World of Warcraft for the simple reason that most of my friends who play such games are playing WoW, and I would rather game with them than a bunch of strangers. There seem to be a lot of nice evolutionary touches, but it's still really just a new skin on the same old Nethack.

    I'm still waiting to see what the "next big thing" in MMORPGs will be. I don't see much evidence that the answer is coming in 2005.

    Then again, I'm one of those jerks who sits down at just about every single mouse-controled FPS deathmatch game, frags a few people, and says "meh... I played this game already, back when it was called Quake."
    • "I played this game already, back when it was called Quake."

      Silly youngster. I played Quake back when it was called Rise of the Triad.

      Seriously though, I'm sot so sure there will be a "next big thing" in this genre any time soon. Enough people seem to be content with the current model to keep it going as is.
      • Silly youngster. I played Quake back when it was called Rise of the Triad.

        First of all, I'm probably older than you, whippersnapper.

        Quake was a revolution over previous shooters in that the mouse-targeting 3D engine provided a fluid full range of movement.

        Keyboard-driven "2.5D" deathmatch games like Doom, Marathon, etc., had a whole different feel to them. Playing quake after playing those games was such a dramatic difference it was like getting out of a wheelchair for the first time and then sprinting
        • You probably are older. I'm only pushing 30. I was just making a little joke. Honestly though, I know that quake was more than a 2.5D game, but to me the feel of it was a lot closer to ROTT or Doom than it was to later games like Q3A or UT. Then again, I've always used the mouse for left-right movements (dating back to Wolf 3d) and used the keyboard for forward-reverse and strafing. Quake II was the first time I really felt like I had left 2.5D but YMMV (and obviously does).

  • Something for the adults? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Shihar ( 153932 ) on Monday December 20, 2004 @02:08PM (#11139093)
    The year might be considered 'diverse' next to previous years, but the truth is, only a few companies offered up anything new on the formula. You basically can cut MMORPGs between the Everquest arch type, the space arch type, and small time odd ball like puzzle pirates. Unfortunately, the only companies that have truly tried to innovate and change the generic MMORPG formula have been smaller companies that lack the resources to really go all out.

    The major MMORPGs are defined by the leveling treadmill and dice roll based combat, pure and simple. WoW might have refined the treadmill, and AO might have thrown it in a new setting, but the core game play is the same. I don't know about anyone else, but I am burnt out and annoyed.

    Gamers are thought of as kids under the age of 18. How you make a game for someone under the age of 18, and how you make a game for someone with a job and a wife are two very different thing. The thing that is being discovered is that the only reason why we have the misconception that games are for kids is because the first generation of video games was embraced by younger folks. Those people have grown up now, but they have certainly not out grown games. On the contrary, they are the best market out there. Not only do they love games, but they have a big fat wad of cash and consider 50 dollars spent on a video game to be nothing. They don't care if they shell out 20 a month for a subscription based game that they like. For some reason though, MMORPGs seem determined not to appeal to these people.

    When I was young, I could afford to spend 8 hours a day on the computer. A game like Everquest was perfect. I had the time and the patience to blow large hunks of my day at some leveling treadmill when I can load of CS or Unreal and start kicking ass instantly. I am older and richer now. I can't afford to waste that much of my time, but I am willing to pay significantly more to be entertained.

    I like MMORPGs. I like the social aspect of such games. I like the massive persistent worlds. I like that there are things to do besides killing. I just fucking hate having to 'level up', 'pay my do', 'work', or whatever the fuck you want to call it. My time is more valuable then the time of some 14 year old boy who can spend 18 hours a day on the damn computer every day, yet I have pay the same amount of time to get the same things that he gets. Rationalize the reasons why you should have to waste that much time on an MMORPG all you want, but me and people like me hate it. Period.

    What I want is an MMORPG with all the basic ingredients of an MMORG, I just want the damned experience/leveling/skill/treadmill systems and the combat systems stripped. Gut the damn MMORPG and fill its innards with a Half Life 2/FarCry/Thief style engine. Imagine if your thief character really had to sneak around like you were Garret from Thief. Imagine if swordplay was fast paced like Jedi Knight. Imagine if your archer snuck around firing and running like in FarCry. Then imagine after a hard day of fighting you could go kick it back in a bar or craft Puzzle Pirates style. Maybe for the economically inclined there could be an economic game like Rail Road Tycoon (or whatever) underneath. Perhaps there is also a A Tail in the Desert style player senate and politics. Maybe there is even a little Command and Conquer style tactical commanding.

    Whatever the case, there is a lot more out there then whack the mole RPGs. It is too bad no MMORPG makers have grown some balls to do something more creative then a leveling treadmill (WoW, Everquest, SWG) or tribes with a larger battlefield (PlanetSide). I suppose in the end it isn't all bad. With some many MMORPGs out there that I don't want, that leaves more money to go to games like Half Life 2.
    • With the old pencil-and-paper RPGs, the levelling concept makes sense. The combat is all storytelling and imagination, and levelling allows a mechanism for your character to "get good" at fighting dragons or facing other challeges.

      But video games have a proud legacy of combat and action simulations. There's no need roll random numbers to determine whether your character managed to time his jump right to get across the chasm. The player tries to do it, and succeeds or fails. Plan your tactics just right
    • This whole "click on stupid rat thing and wait for it to die" kind of game play is really what puts me off from all the MMORPGs: frankly, it's extremely boring. When I'm forced to do so for hours on end just to level up my charater, it gets ridiculous.

      I've played the WoW, EQ2, Guild Wars and City of Heroes betas. The first three never really held my interest: the CoH was a real step in the right direction. Besides the absolutely kickass character creation screen, there was a bit more strategy in fighting,

      • Planetside, while being entirely PVP, offers what you want (except the character creation screen, which is stuck in the 90s). Strategy in fighting, it's fast paced, and while fun is "objective" I think it's quite fun. Needs more players though. :)

    • Re:Something for the adults? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Imagine if your thief character really had to sneak around like you were Garret from Thief. Imagine if swordplay was fast paced like Jedi Knight. Imagine if your archer snuck around firing and running like in FarCry. Then imagine after a hard day of fighting you could go kick it back in a bar or craft Puzzle Pirates style. Maybe for the economically inclined there could be an economic game like Rail Road Tycoon (or whatever) underneath. Perhaps there is also a A Tail in the Desert style player senate and po

      • Re:Something for the adults? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Shihar ( 153932 ) on Monday December 20, 2004 @04:22PM (#11140626)
        Half the point of the MMORPG is growing your character. That's half the point of any RP game. Throw out that part and what's the point, anyway? Imagine if in the Legend of Zelda you started out with all the items and heart containers! Wouldn't that be fun! No, wait, it would suck. Half the fun is watching Link grow and being able to take on larger and harder challenges.

        Part of the paradigm shift that people are utterly unable to move away from is that an MMORPG (or RPG for that matter) needs to have levels and all of that other crap. That stuff is a crutch. Fallout would have been absolutely amazing RPG, even if there was not a single skill in the game, combat was FPS, and skills were puzzles. There has been a distinct fear (maybe terror is a better word) of trying to meld action and role playing. That is role playing spelled with an E, not roll playing with dice.

        The building up of a character to near god hood is all well and good if you are playing D&D with your friends. It is even stomachable if it is a single player RPG. The problem comes in when you try and keep this concept into the multiplayer realm. Not everyone can be a god, but MMORPGs sure as hell try regardless. What they are missing is that you are not feeling a sense of being an awesome hero rising up in an MMORPG like you do in a game like Zelda. You just feel the compulsive urge to level up, knowing that with the exception of a few children who have 18 hours a day to spend on the computer, you will never be that awesome hero who looks at people and makes them die. So, you have a combat system built for heroes, but a game that crushes them with the reality that you need to be a complete loser in life or child to get there.

        What these games need to do is get rid of the hero mentality and build a game around a world where everyone is mortal, and any idiot with a knife can kill you if you are caught off guard. More importantly though is the inverse, an idiot like you can kill the greatest player in the world if you catch him by surprise.

        An MMORPG is a massively unbalanced game. A monkey with a level 50 character couldn't die to an expert with a level 1 character if he tried. All that I want is a game that puts balance first. This sort of world doesn't have to rule out progress or character development. The idea is to instead focus on balance and fun. If one guy is completely and utterly incapable of killing another guy even after he goes AFK for 10 minutes, chances are your game is massively unbalanced. Character development can certainly include things outside of a few numbers or a score card. Character development includes joining organizations, politics, exploration, team work, PvP, and a whole slew of other things that don't revolve around experience, levels, and a boring combat engine.

        I know people have a hard time believing this, but MMORPGs (and RPGs in general) are NOT defined by having a worthless combat engine. Bad combat doesn't make a game a role playing game. Perhaps technical challenges are a valid excuse for lack of imagination in MMORPGs. That said, those technical challenges are quickly evaporating. Raw number crunching and data sending capabilities continue to increase at a rapid rate. If there is a barrier, it isn't going to be there for much longer. It is just going to take a few people to break out of the clone mentality. Right now the MMORPG world feels like déjà vu of the state of video gaming after Doom. Everyone and their dog wants to repeat what has already been done, and no one has the balls to step up and move forward.
        • Amen, well said, perfect, agree with you 100%, said better then I ever could have.

          I think the biggest barrier right now is bandwith. You can't really do massive action based combat like you can do with forced ticks like in current games. Planetside uses client side hit detection and it suffers for it. It's a quirk of the game, and works, but it wouldn't work too well if you wanted to do melee combat.

          Game companies just need to cut out leveling. It's the most evil concept in multiplayer gaming ever. It cut
      • Half the point of the MMORPG is growing your character. That's half the point of any RP game.

        All of the point in a RP game is RP. If you don't find joy in roleplaying, you're just a lab-rat pulling on the lever which randomly rewards you with pleasure pills.

        Levelling is meaningless. You get bigger numbers on your character, and fight pictures of monsters which require bigger numbers to fight, with a net change in the challenge of zero.

        Roleplay is a fun pastime in which you and others collectively tell
        • Levelling is meaningless. You get bigger numbers on your character, and fight pictures of monsters which require bigger numbers to fight, with a net change in the challenge of zero.

          In a MMORPG without leveling, you'd still have tougher areas and easier areas. You'd have to have a way of taking on monsters in the tougher areas and winning.

          One way to do this through acquiring equipment or spells from the environment, and maybe specializing your combat strategy to be particularly effective against certain t
    • What I want is an MMORPG with all the basic ingredients of an MMORG, I just want the damned experience/leveling/skill/treadmill systems and the combat systems stripped. Gut the damn MMORPG and fill its innards with a Half Life 2/FarCry/Thief style engine. Imagine if your thief character really had to sneak around like you were Garret from Thief. Imagine if swordplay was fast paced like Jedi Knight. Imagine if your archer snuck around firing and running like in FarCry. Then imagine after a hard day of fighti
    • Just pick your favorite MMORPG and BUY a maxed-out account that has been leveled up by some 14 year old who plays for 18 hours a day.
    • Nothing original and different apart from say Second Life or that Egyptian crafting MMOG that are both hugely succesful.
  • While it doesn't have the best graphics in the world, I find eve (www.eve-online.com) to be a very deep, but fun game to play. I tried a few others, but I'm sticking with this one for now.
    • I'd say the graphics are pretty good (c'mon space is mostly empty). Plus, they did get a nice revamp with the new expansion.

      As far as things to do (replayability as well), skills being based on learning times (instead of an XP grind, and they do train while you're offline) and an economy that blows every other MMORPG out of the water, Eve is where it's at.

      Couple that with a mature, diverse community (my corporation alone as players from all over the US, Europe and Asia), and developers who do pretty

  • What about the public? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    With the vast selection of MMORPG games out (or on their way out), and the mentioned increase in total subscriptions, what is the public reaction going to be?

    With violent video games, it seemed to be that a certain threshold needed to be crossed before the public outroar shifted from minor grumblings to a larger, more cohesive assault. I think this became most prevalent around the time of GTA3, and its general national popularity (and subsequent publicity). Is there a similar threshold for MMORPGs whereb

  • Casual Gamers Won In 2004 (Score:5, Informative)

    by EngineeringMarvel ( 783720 ) on Monday December 20, 2004 @02:14PM (#11139141)
    I played FFXI from Oct of 2003 to Feb of 2004. While I enjoyed the game, it is not casual gamer friendly since getting anything done requires time slots of atleast an hour. I then played Star Wars Galaxies from July 2004 to Sept 2004. That game lacked content and bug fixes more than anything else. As soon as the Star Wars part wore off of me, the dullness of the game sunk in.

    In comes World of Warcraft. Wow, what a relief. This game is ideal for people like me. You can actually play for 30 minutes and get a lot done. WoW also has in game documentation that gets rid of all the guessing. Another biggie for casual gamers, we don't have the time to try 100 things just to get item we want. In short, casual gamers now have an excellent choice for MMORPGs that fit to our gaming style. Before, I'm not sure there was, so either way, the casual gamer gains a new game type in 2004 (even though it existed for several years before). Besides, I don't think too many veteran MMORPGers will mind seeing SOE losing profits after the type of customer satisfaction they have gotten in the last year.
    • WoW is a Blizzard game through and through; there's no real surprise that it's very solo friendly, easy to learn and highly addictive. A lot of people who have never played a MMOG will pick it up and its a great way to introduce new players into the genre.
  • I played Earth and Beyond, it was my first MMORPG (Galaxies was my second), and I really liked the inside-space ship vs character walking around in a spaceport modes. Eve I saw you did not have the freedom to get out of your ship, you were just a picture inside of your interface. I know SWG has ships now that I no longer play it but are there any other games where you have a ship for most of the game and can walk around outside of it for the other times?
    (I posted this once already, was modded Troll 2x, but
  • I'm not a big MMORPG player, in fact I have stopped playing them for about six months. I have not tried the newest batch of games that have been released and so I will not comment there. I spend my online time playing the RTS style games (not that it really matters)

    I am however cautiosly optimistic about The Matrix Online. If it plays as well as some of the recent games that are so highly praised it could be a real winner. The setting would be interesting and unique and the storyline is one that I hav

  • CoH vs WoW (Score:1, Troll)

    by Sodade ( 650466 )
    I have been playing CoH since it came out and was eager to try WoW because I dig the fantasy genre more than generic comics and I want to be a badass sword wielding warrior type. I have to say that the combat feel of WoW is very boring and not very epic when compared to playing my Katana-wielding, Combat Jumping regen scrapper in CoH. CoH has a much better arcade feel. I also like the fact that I can take on packs of even-leveled badguys (actually, up to +4) and a boss - it just feels more epic. Going to wa
    • Ooh damn, yeah, never buy that many months of a game in advance. In fact I try to stick with a monthly subscription. It's just too hard to gauge how much fun you're going to find the game in a month, let alone 6.
    • If you're looking for a fantasy CoH, I think EQ2 is your better bet.

      I know it get's smashed on, mostly because they realeased it a month too early for competition, but as far as I'm concerning, the battle is exactly like CoH. (I played CoH here and there.)

      Where in Final Fantasy I would sit for 30 seconds waiting for my chance to do something besides autoattack, in EQ2 I am jamming buttons to use the myriad of abilities availiable to me.

      I haven't played WoW, but maybe EQ2 is the fantasy system you are lo
  • Planetside, a MMOFPS, and to begin with, it kicked rear big time. I've been playing it for all of 2004 but I can see the end in sight, both of my subscription, and the game.

    The idea was simple. Take an FPS, make it multiplayer over a persistant world. New vehicles came along after launch (a bomber and an AA vehicle) and the future looked rosy. But the game has suffered - it's had 3 different managers over the past year, an unpopular expansion, and promised features "just head" which never appear . T
    • This game will probably never happen, but I wrote up a MMOFPS based on the cartoon Transformers. It has heavier RPG aspects than PlanetSide, so your character can take longer to level, and more personalized team work. I've always found that I can have a maxxed out character within a few short hours on PlanetSide. I kicked some tail on PlanetSide, but it had no long term character development to hold my interest. Design Document [geocities.com]
  • Seems that most things that are hot this year (instancing etc) have been in AO from day 1. Mind you that day 1 was pretty ugly for AO, but it's very good these days, and you can play it for free for a full year or possibly more!

    give it a shot if you were scared by the really bad launch.

    Im.
    • in other words, it's worth all the $0 you pay for it. I played AO in beta and liked it, but not enough to buy it. I got myself a free account last week and played some, but honestly, I don't really see much of a difference between AO now and the beat I played years ago. In fact, the game world seems worse - it feels like they abandoned the older content with all their paying customers focusing on expansion content. I like the way the instanced missions work (a concept later adopted by other MMORPGs) but the

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