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Role Playing (Games)

The MMORPGs of 2005 41

Posted by Zonk from the upcoming-ways-to-ruin-your-life dept.
MMORPGDot.com has a two-part piece on the upcoming Massive games of 2005. The first article in the series touches on big name titles expected out this year like Matrix Online and Tabula Rasa, while the second article mentions lesser known small budget titles. From the big-title article: "If a list of features could make a great game, Dark & Light would be the first. NP Cube is promising some really ambitious things like a 40.000km gameworld without any loading, the possibility to become the king or conquer a town and enough goodies to whet your appetite. The question is how many of those features will actually be present at release?"
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The MMORPGs of 2005 More

The MMORPGs of 2005

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  • This game sounds like it could have promise. Of course, I though the second and third movies had promise. Moving past that though, this game really might be something great. Any beta testers out there willing to comment? I'm wondering is the game is worth a look or not.
    • I can't comment. I'm too busy moderating!
    • I've played the Matrix game and if the online version improves on the gameplay I wouldn't doubt it being a great sell. Personally I think the MMORPG would live up to its promise. The game was awesome so this would probably be the one I'd be most interested in hearing about features and map size.

    • Re:Matix Online (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @04:21PM (#11554354)
      Having beta tested since Nov. but not having logged in for a couple weeks (to diversify my gaming experiences for a bit), it isn't anything more than any other MMOG wrapped up in Matrix style. Specifically leans toward the CoH gameplay.

      It still needs a lot of polish and optimization. Once it launches the plan is to have a flowing storyline written by Dave Gibbons. Right now that would be about the only thing that would convince me to play after beta.

      My only fear at launch is summed up best by CtrlAltDel [ctrlaltdel-online.com]. So far the beta community is a pretty cool bunch though.

      • Oddly, I had the same thought after my original post. I figured there would be a hundred Trinit33's or some shit like that. That comic is priceless. Thanks for the link.

    • Re:Matix Online (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It has the premise to be a great game.

      - The combat system is very cool at first and it sustains enough interest (with higher abilities) as you level up.
      - There are TONS of different abilities to choose from. The special moves (in all skill trees) look awesome
      - Tons of cool clothes/items and other shit available. Where else can you find women characters with short leather minis.
      - PvP!!!
      - The missions look ok but boring since there is no live content available (to avoid story spoilers)
      - There is quite a bit

    • Re:Matix Online (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dhakbar ( 783117 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @08:04PM (#11556934)
      I haven't beta tested this game, but I did live (for far too long) with a certain individual who used to work for SOE that was hired as the assistand producer for Matrix Online. This man has recently been fired from that post, but I'm quite positive that he has already caused immense damage to the production of that game.

      I agree that it looks like it has potential, but having seen the production of 2 MMORPGs from the inside, I can tell you that the potential will never be fulfilled if the project is mismanaged. The company has a deadline which will be met, regardless of the quality of their product. Since my former roommate was certainly not skilled in management, I hold very dim hopes for Matrix Online.
      • I tried the beta for about 20 minutes, totally failed to see any attraction in the game and didn't log back in after that.

        I'm afraid that has summed up my experience so far in MMORPGs, still waiting for a good one.

  • The most important feature in an MMORPG is... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MBraynard ( 653724 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @04:13PM (#11554239) Journal
    Other players. Otherwise it becomes a single player RPG.

    That's part of the problem with so many coming out. It doesn't matter how great the game is AS MUCH as it matters if you can find other people to co-operate with/fight online, or as much as it matters as that is the game your friends are playing. Hence the importance of marketing the game - something small developers can't afford to do well and players may not have the patience to wait around for word of mouth to succeed.

    Case in Point: Allegiance was by far the best MMO I have ever played - but it died due to lack of players because MS dropped the ball in marketing it.

    • Bingo. And people only have so much money to spend on these outrageous subscriptions. Personally, I think that the trend will be towards finding ways in the game to help people connect and group etc. Features that will give players more of a sense of being around other players.

    • But this isnt as important as you might think.

      For example, FFXI has (or at least had) 500,000 people on 30 different servers. Who needs 500,000 people if you will never know about them? A quick jump over to my microsoft calculator just told me that if you have only one server and 16,000 people it would be the exact same gameplay. I would rather play an MMO that I really like, than one that is popular. Especially considering you only need 16,000 people playing it to fill up a single server.

      Obviously o

  • Size != Content (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nick_davison ( 217681 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @05:20PM (#11554956)
    NP Cube is promising some really ambitious things like a 40.000km gameworld without any loading

    You know, with a fractal algorithm and high enough precision location variables, I could give you a ten bajillion square mile game world next week. It'd suck as there's be nothing to do there except go up and down some hills and mountains, maybe occasionally swim across an ocean or screen, but it'd be huge.

    A large gameworld is utterly meaningless without content. Gameplay is about density of content. Once you have a good density, sure, more is always good.

    I'd rather play a game with 4km^2 of content with five really well considered pieces of content per meter than a 40,000 km^2 world with one automatically placed generic feature every 10m. Sure, it may technically have even more content than the smaller world but the quality and density of content will make me choose the smaller one.

    At the end of the day, do you really want to play in a huge 1:1 simulation of Nebraska or would you have more fun at a much smaller, well designed theme park?
    • This is exactly correct - I've personally implemented a data generation algorithm that generates highly shapable terrain heightmaps, and the datafiles are something on the order of 60 bytes per patch. A player would only need 800 bytes or so of terrain data at any given time. A patch's size is insignificant, since you can add as much detail as you like fractally. In my calcluations, I could model a terrain the size of Earth's surface at something like a 3m resolution in approximately 260GB. Large terrains

  • Roma Victor correction (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The article [mmorpgdot.com] is a bit thin on the features [roma-victor.com] and details [roma-victor.com] and also incorrectly indicates that Jolt is the publisher. It's an independent and largely community-driven [roma-victor.com] project.

  • Guild Wars (Score:3, Informative)

    by Shatrat ( 855151 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @07:12PM (#11556263)
    Of all the games in TFA Guild Wars is probably the only one I will buy. 3 are automatically disqualified because of being published by SOE. Anyone who plays Everquest will probably understand why, even if they dont agree with my personal boycott. Guild Wars game play is very innovative and you can read about that in the article, but the most impressive thing to me is how good the game looks. Arenanet has managed to make extremely good looking graphics run even on lower end video cards. Anyway, im in the Beta now and I cant wait for the release. Maybe Ill see some Slashdotters there?
    • As I understand it, you'll see a lot of /.ers there - I've been playing the betas since the E3 event (er, or was that technically an alpha?).

      Now, anyone want to start a /. guild, see if we can break the guild system, or perhaps find an upper limit to how many can join a single guild?

  • Tabula Rasa? (Score:4, Informative)

    by SirBruce ( 679714 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @09:45PM (#11557838) Homepage
    Despite the text to the contrary, there's no entry for Tabula Rasa in either part of the list. They also list the expansions for AC1, AC2, and EQ1, which is hardly exhaustive. 2005 will likely see the release of more than one expansion for EQ1, expansions for DAoC, UO and WWIIOL, and possibly EQ2 and WoW. Not to mention several other Asian games that are likely to be released: A3, Fairyland, Hello Kitty, etc. Bruce

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