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Role Playing (Games)

MMORPG Evolution 81

Posted by Zonk from the trammel-to-battlegrounds dept.
1up.com has a piece looking at how Massively Multiplayer Online Games have evolved from the days of UO and Meridian 59. From the article: "As far as the genre has come, though, MMO gaming has still only barely grown out of its infancy. Blizzard crows that 4 million users globally are hooked to World of WarCraft-but that leaves 6-billion-plus people on Earth yet to be reached. Are MMOs doomed to continue fishing from the same pond of players over and over? Major publishers are asking themselves that very question right now. So are we. Developers must do six very real things to make MMO games reach out to even more people: rethink monthly fees, manage in-game economies in new ways, explore new worlds and themes, use new technology to change the way people access games, weigh the balance between structured storytelling and open worlds, and foster a better sense of community among players."
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MMORPG Evolution More

MMORPG Evolution

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  • Eh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Southpaw018 ( 793465 ) * on Friday November 04, 2005 @07:36AM (#13949078) Journal
    This article sets up an absolutely ludicrous comparison - "yeah, sure, you're four times bigger than any other MMO EVER but you don't have the rest of Earth's population yet! So you SUCK!"

    I think that WoW proves quite clearly that there's plenty of players to tap and that the market is in its infancy. All you have to do is play the right cards, something WoW has done/is doing quite effectively.

  • Absolute rubbish (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04, 2005 @07:44AM (#13949105)
    The argument about MMORPGs all drawing from the same pool of customers and simply trading them around in accordance with the latest fads is, and has been known to be for some time, complete and utter rubbish.

    MMORPGs are the fastest growing genre around, from what I can see. Go back a couple of years and you've basically got UO and Everquest with about 400,000 players each, and a couple of others, like Anarchy Online, hovering at their heels with 200,000 players max. These days, You've got World of Warcraft with millions, Final Fantasy XI with a significant fraction of a million, Everquest and Everquest II both with 400,000 plus players, City of Heroes with a good few hundred thousand and Guild Wars (which arguably doesn't count due to the lack of a subscription model) with loads as well. This is before you even move onto the dozens and dozens of smaller MMORPGs, such as Galaxies, Eve Online, Matrix Online, Planetside, Dark Ages of Camelot, etc, etc, etc. In short, there are both more and bigger MMORPGs.

    I think what you've really seen over the last few years, particularly with franchise MMORPGs (WoW, FFXI, Galaxies etc) or niche MMORPGs (Planetside, Sims Online, Eve etc) is new players being brought to the genre through bridges from elsewhere. Want to hazard a guess at how many people play World of Warcraft because either of the Warcraft connection, or the Diablo/Blizzard connection? I've not seen any figures, but I'd guess it's a significant part of the player base. Galaxies was, by all accounts, a pretty appaling MMORPG when it was launched, but it was reasonably successful due to the franchise drawing in fans of other SW games and has survived long enough to develop into something worth playing.

    I suspect that over the next few years we'll see other genres moving into the MMO world. We've already seen Planetside have a stab at a MMOFPS and although it's not been a wild success, it's done some important and useful proof of concept work. I suspect that RTSes and, in particular, Sports Games will be the next to go MMO in a big way. You could almost argue - although it might be pushing things a little - that the online career options in Forza (popular X-Box racing game, a la Gran Turismo) already have most of the elements of a MMOG.
    • Galaxies was, by all accounts, a pretty appaling MMORPG when it was launched, but it was reasonably successful due to the franchise drawing in fans of other SW games and has survived long enough to develop into something worth playing.
      Be patient. In six months SOE will scrap the combat system again and then the game will be just as appalling as it used to be, if not moreso...

    • Re:Absolute rubbish (Score:4, Informative)

      by Sandman1971 ( 516283 ) on Friday November 04, 2005 @08:42AM (#13949354) Homepage Journal
      Want to hazard a guess at how many people play World of Warcraft because either of the Warcraft connection, or the Diablo/Blizzard connection? I've not seen any figures, but I'd guess it's a significant part of the player base. Speaking from personal experience only, it appears that the number is about 60%. Speaking with my guildmates and people on the various servers I play on, it appears that 6/10 people who are playing WoW never played an MMORPG before WoW. And out of those 60%, most have tried WoW due to having played previous Blizzard games such as Warcraft, Starcraft or Diablo. Again, from past experience, it also appears that most MMORPG players play only one MMORPG at a time. Rare are the people who are, for example, playing and paying for WoW and Everquest at the same time. So as the number of total MMORPG subscriptions rises, there's very little 'double dipping', where one person is paying for more than one subscription. This would indicate, at least from my personal view, that it would indicate the number of players is increasing. So I'm absolutely backing up your statement that "The argument about MMORPGs all drawing from the same pool of customers and simply trading them around in accordance with the latest fads is, and has been known to be for some time, complete and utter rubbish."

    • Re:Absolute rubbish (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Mr. Ghost ( 674666 )
      The argument about MMORPGs all drawing from the same pool of customers and simply trading them around in accordance with the latest fads is, and has been known to be for some time, complete and utter rubbish.

      It's not complete rubbish as I know that many of the players of these games are signed up for multiple games. I personally only play Guild Wars as I don't like the monthly subscriptions, but I have two friends who plays WOW, SWG, UO, CoF and Guild Wars and two other friends who play 3 of those (WOW, C

    • "The argument about MMORPGs all drawing from the same pool of customers and simply trading them around in accordance with the latest fads is, and has been known to be for some time, complete and utter rubbish."

      While you make a good point, bear in mind that MMORPG's suffer from a couple of problems when it comes to drawing really huge audiences. First, there is the issue of time and level of commitment - most MMOs require both. Second, there is the "culture" of online game in general that isn't terribly co

  • I liked them better when... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04, 2005 @07:59AM (#13949153)
    ... they were called MUDs.

    Let's not forget our roots!

  • Current MMORPGs are doing just fine (Score:5, Informative)

    by macrom ( 537566 ) <macrom75@hotmail.com> on Friday November 04, 2005 @08:43AM (#13949360) Homepage
    Developers must do six very real things to make MMO games reach out to even more people:

    rethink monthly fees

    I think the game should be handed out for free (or minimal charge of $9.99 for shipping you a live copy). That's the main gripe I hear from a lot of players and friends: that we need to pay to get the game AND pay each month. Of course, after a year, you forget that you even paid for the game...

    manage in-game economies in new ways

    I think WoW is doing just fine with that. So far it's not like Everquest where within a year you were pretty much useless unless you had platinum pieces.

    explore new worlds and themes

    Isn't that what City of Heros/Villans does? WoW? Final Fantasy? Star Wars? Sims Online? WTF do you want, a Dukes of Hazzard MMORPG?

    use new technology to change the way people access games

    Until someone invents new technology for ALL of us, you're just gonna have to use a computer and an internet connection to play. Duh. This statement, to me, is pointless.

    weigh the balance between structured storytelling and open worlds

    Call me crazy, but I think WoW does a fine job of this.

    and foster a better sense of community among players

    Humans are humans, and when they get into an online world, they act stupid. There's little accountability for their actions. Again, I think WoW has done a good job of controlling camping (though ninja looting can be a problem, but that's the fault of the player), providing instanced raids for mass amounts of people, faction vs. faction battle, etc. Not sure what the other games are doing, but I think this evolution is happening.

    From reading the summary and glancing at the article, am I the only one here wondering if these people have even PLAYED an MMORPG recently?
    • weigh the balance between structured storytelling and open worlds

      Call me crazy, but I think WoW does a fine job of this.

      Wow does an a acceptable job of this but I think there's a subcontext to that small sentence. The continents are used up, there's no open space. No player housing or even just guild housing.

      A guildy brought up how cool it would be for the large guilds with sufficient in-game cash to be able to create a guild house. Maybe have a flag or something that other guilds could try to 'st
      • i think SWG does this, i never bothered with the station pass since by the time i was interested in EQ2 i had lost interest in EQ but i think you can build whole cities
        • Well, you can build whole ghost towns.

          In fact, there's a profession called politician, where the higher you get, as mayor you can authorize placement of a repair garage, a city hall, ultimately even a shuttle port, and with additional "levels", you can place your city on the global map.

          A town is just an area with one of these politicians and something like at least 10 houses in it. Never was a politician so I don't know the details, but I did help form two towns by placing houses. Owned my own cantina onc
      • I don't think the continents are ALL used up, are they? I know if you look at the map in game and on the offical site, there are a few zones that do nothing when you mouse over them, implying that they are meant for future expansion.

        As for the guild house idea, I like that a lot. I know nothing of the code behnd WoW, but perhaps they could make the entrance to the guild house an instance, where you enter a portal in a major city (Stormwind, Undercity, etc.) and appear automatically in the house of your gu
        • "I know nothing of the code behnd WoW, but perhaps they could make the entrance to the guild house an instance, where you enter a portal in a major city (Stormwind, Undercity, etc.) and appear automatically in the house of your guild (similar to the officer's quarters portal I've seen in Stormwind, perhaps)."

          This is exactly how City of Heroes (another game that had no "building" component) has implemented super group bases with the addition of City of Villains. It's certainly not as "natural" as having an a
    • Real, expensive game boxes were meant to be used as a limiting factor to the number of accounts available at sign-up. And even that still didn't work for Blizzard, as they didn't anticipate the rapid sell-out. Can you imagine the servers if the WoW client had been a free download? Even if accounts were limited, the cap would be reached quickly, leaving many people who really want to play frozen out by those who grabbed the client and an account, but never really bothered to play.
    • If you give out the game for free before the player has started paying the monthly fee they will go to ridiculous lengths to prove to themself and others that the game sucks. Otherwise they know they're going to pay that monthly fee and they know that isn't good for them.

  • Monthly Fees (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Digital Vomit ( 891734 ) on Friday November 04, 2005 @09:11AM (#13949505) Homepage Journal
    Developers must do six very real things to make MMO games reach out to even more people: rethink monthly fees

    I believe monthly fees (or, at least, high fees like WoW's) are going to be the main stumbling block for the developing MMORPG market. If people are going to be paying for a game five times over in a single year, they're going to buy fewer games. Right now, I play WoW and it's the *only* thing I play because I want to get my money's worth out of it. Not many people will want to pay for three of four MMORPGs at $15/mo because the fees will simply be too high.

    Unless monthly fees are drastically reduced to a reasonable level -- say, $2/month (especially if you have to drop $50 up front) -- there will simply be less of a market for more than a handful of MMORPGs. There are not 6 billion more people ready and waiting for new MMORPGs to hit the market.

    Reasonable pricing models will ensure everyone gets a piece of the pie. Obscene pricing models will guarantee one or two major games will dominate the market. I don't know about you, but I would prefer more variety in my online gaming.

    • I would almost prefer a (low) monthly fee to the initial purchase price. I think it would keep the company motivated to provide some decent upkeep to their product, whereas a single up-front cost might lend to the host-company's apathy once you initial offering is collected. That way I can quit whenever I feel like and not feel like I have to play long enough to recoup the initial cost.

      Hell, even crack dealers will sometimes give you your first one for free, and they do tons of repeat business.

      However

    • Unless monthly fees are drastically reduced to a reasonable level -- say, $2/month (especially if you have to drop $50 up front) -- there will simply be less of a market for more than a handful of MMORPGs. There are not 6 billion more people ready and waiting for new MMORPGs to hit the market.

      The problem with low monthly fees is that you need to upkeep the central server and pay for its bandwith usage. At some point the monthly costs caused by a single player (in terms of bandwith used per month, for ex

      • This is generally how they handle it now. In WoW each land mass is it's own server. Instances are also seperate servers. But letting the client side handle it is going to cause some major lag issues.
        • Not to mention script kiddies issuing themselves Flaming Swords of Pwnhood. EverQuest learned the hard way to remove every bit of decision making from the client side, turning it into an extremely complex 3D "dumb terminal". I recall stories of people hacking the running speed of Spirit of Wolf, cranking it up to 255, since the server didn't care what speed you actually ran at with the spell on you, only that you had the spell on you.
    • Getting your money's worth is a problem. I'd like to see a monthly fee of, say, $10, but you only pay that fee if you play more than a set number of hours. Play half of that time, you pay half the fee. Don't get chance to play at all and you're not charged at all.

      I've cancelled subscriptions because sometimes I just haven't had the time to play enough to warrant paying out month after month.
    • The issue with monthly fees as well as box price (the $$ you initially put down to purchase the game) is that many of these arguments have been emperically denied. Pretty much every generation of MMO games has experienced the same kind of discussion: "The market is saturated, how on earth do we expand?". At each of these junctures, it was argued that publishers should lower the purchase price, and lower the monthly fees. Yet one merely has to glance and the profit and subscription numbers for WoW to real
    • Not many people will want to pay for three of four MMORPGs at $15/mo because the fees will simply be too high.

      I think you are right, but the direction things are going isn't going to be toward a cheaper price, it'll be getting more with your subscription.

      I remember the days when my modem internet access was measured and metered in minutes. Those days sucked. People in general prefer a reasonable rate for unlimited use. Cell phones are moving that direction. My plan has enough minutes it might as well be unl
    • Every so often someone will come out with how $15 a month for games is too expensive and the price should be lowered without offering any alternative revenue stream. Usually these statements are accompanied with some comment about how the companies are raking in so much money from their subscriptions.

      Simply running an MMO is a very expensive proposition. There are employees who have to be paid, facilities that have to be rented, equipment which must be amortized (you don't really think the Everquest servers

    • Here is one way to look at monthly fees. Lots of games coming out lately, especially for consoles, have very limited play, you can complete the game in 10-15 hours. Heck, the reviews I read said you can finish the single player campaign of Quake IV in 10 hours. Fable was about 12 hours. Those are games you payed $50 for. Now look at WoW. $50 bucks for the game, plus $15 a month, for say, a year. $230 for the year. At the Quake IV rate of $5 per hour of game, that is 46 hours of gameplay in the year.

  • *shrug* (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ShadowsHawk ( 916454 )
    I really couldn't care less about MMORPGs. I used to play MUD, but quit shortly after they started charging a monthly fee. I'm much happier playing single player games that I purchase for $20-30 as opposed to paying for the same game repeatedly.
  • I've played Legend Of The Red Dragon and Trade Wars on the ole 9600 baud up through the Realm and now long time Final Fantasy fan. On FF when I look for a party its not even generaly with people from my linkshell, just a couple of random strangers. Most of the time there are people who don't even share a common language as me. I'm not a hardcore gamer at all, i've had it 3 years and i'm only level 53 rank 5. I look at it just like any other medium, be it dvd, book, whatever. I tend too want too buy stu

  • WOW on a console (Score:3, Interesting)

    by agent86maxwellsmart ( 928449 ) on Friday November 04, 2005 @09:30AM (#13949631)
    For me, an accessible console rendition would get me to try one. Sitting in a chair for that many hours isn't something I'll trade my single player experience for. And no, FFXI on the 360 doesn't count...I would want something closer to Guild Wars, City of Heroes or WOW.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Guild Wars == Phantasy Star Online, more or less. Which is available on the Xbox, and I think GameCube. PSO is more arcade-y (a bit...), but that's natural for a console. You team up with 1-3 other people and go do quests and pick up rare items, etc. There is a monthly fee, however.

  • Six? Make that Seven. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xplenumx ( 703804 ) on Friday November 04, 2005 @09:53AM (#13949830)
    MMORPGs simply aren't friendly to the casual player.

    Way back, when the dinosaurs still roamed the earth, I used to play muds religiously - Sanctuary, Armageddon, 3K, I loved them all. Lucky for me, my roommate failed out of college due to mudding, which caused me to take a hard long look at my life and come to the realization that while I wasn't failing, muds were certainly keeping me from excelling. I dropped them cold turkey, which was probably one of the best things I've ever done. I've always followed the MMORPG scene quite closely and have always wanted to get back into it (especially since I had a number of friends who played Everquest). Finally when WoW came out, I decided that I was at a good place in my life and career and, after a long talk with my wife, I bought the game. At first it was great - the quests didn't take too long, I could play an hour or two a night without any problems, and I had a great time. Unfortunately, I quickly got to a point that if I wanted to accomplish anything at all in the game, I'd have to sit down for a solid three to five hour stretch (sometimes for several days in a row depending on the raid dungeon). That simply isn't practical. Additionally, while I enjoyed the social element, you simply can't walk away at any time - to an extent the game dictates when you can quit. I finally quit WoW when it became clear that I'd never see the new content that was being released as all of it was catered to the hard core player.

    Is it possible to appeal to the casual player? I believe so. For example in Guildwars, you can hire henchmen which allow you to play by yourself when needed and still progress in the game. The MMOs out there demand that I work my schedule around them; instead I need the games to work around mine.

    • I agree with a lot of what you said, but I think the point should be changed to "End game isn't friendly to the casual player." I think that is where they have the hardest time striking the balance between rewarding those that are dedicated while letting those that don't have hours to play enjoy themselves as well.

      I thought World of Warcraft did a great job of making the beginning of the game as painless as possible for new people. My girlfiend, who is no avid gamer, was able to easily get into Warcraft wi
    • "For example in Guildwars, you can hire henchmen which allow you to play by yourself when needed and still progress in the game. The MMOs out there demand that I work my schedule around them; instead I need the games to work around mine."

      Then obviously an MMORPG isn't for you.

      I see these same complaints all the time - Wah! I bought a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER game and it isn't any fun playing solo! No shit, Sherlock. I bet if you bought any board game intended for 2-8 players it wouldn't be any fun solo ei
      • Then obviously an MMORPG isn't for you.

        Or for any of the other members of a vast, untapped, potentially extremely profitable market. Maybe someone should look into fixing this.

        I see these same complaints all the time - Wah! I bought a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER game and it isn't any fun playing solo!

        Way to miss the point. There is no reason why "massively multiplayer" has to mean "massive and rigidly-scheduled time commitments". There is no reason why an MMORPG should not be friendly to the kind of person who
        • Well, then, since I'm so slow, maybe you can explain to me how WoW is not friendly to "to the kind of person who wants to log on once a week, for two hours, and wander round town chatting to other people, maybe do a quest or two, then log off again and get on with real life"

          If you mean that it will take you 5 years to get to level 60 and all the really good loot if you only play 2 hours a week, how do you propose making it fair to people who are willing to play more?

          Games like Everquest were absolutely i
    • I used to play muds religiously - Sanctuary, Armageddon...

      Armageddon? As in the RPI? Hahaha... oh man. That is so funny. You think you can quit. No my friend, you just take breaks. You know Allanak is calling you back... you crave talking your way out of a Templar's grips... loading up on spice from Kurac... going on missions in the Byn... and dodgy fucking 'rinth elves everywhere. Stop fooling yourself, reload zMUD, and come back home. Muhahahaha!
    • I would add to this that MMOs, as they exist now, aren't suited to keeping skilled players entertained either. There is no reward for being a good player.

      All of the content that has been added to WoW, with the exception of Dire Maul, has been geared toward large raids which take little skill for individual players to complete -- instead, it's just a matter of getting enough people together and then getting them to do their jobs. A large group of very average players with a couple skilled individuals at th
      • Yes - 5 man content is definitely more fun and challenging than 40 man, however it is very difficult for the designers to balance 5 man content (think of all the different class mixes) than 40 man content. If you make 5 man content very hard, it will be impossible for some groups and trivial for others - look at the Shaman epic helm quest in Scholo. When I first started playing, I used to 5-man Strath / Scholo / Dire Maul / BRS with my mates. However, that eventually wore out. Now the fun for me is runnin

  • Monthly Fees (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Donniedarkness ( 895066 )
    I honestly don't see why so many people get upset about these... they're getting their money's worth (NOTE: I don't play any MMORPG's, and never have)... I mean, updates for the MMORPG's are HUGE, sometimes adding all sorts of new content. On top of that, you've got GM's and such who keep an eye on the players and try to make sure no major cheating is going on. SOMEONE has to pay for those servers, and I'm sure that no one wants to pay > $100 for a computer game, up front.
  • Eve Online. Sci-fi Space themed MMOG with no level/no grind, excellent player based market, balanced semi consentual pvp.

    You can do anything you want when you want without feeling like your falling behind.

  • World of Warcraft enlarged the "pond" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AHumbleOpinion ( 546848 ) on Friday November 04, 2005 @10:53AM (#13950392) Homepage
    Are MMOs doomed to continue fishing from the same pond of players over and over?

    While World of Warcraft did take some players away from other MMOs it's success is also due to the fact that it significantly increased the number of MMO players. It made MMOs far more accessible, especially to casual players. In short, it grew that "pond". There is no reason to think that the pond cannot grow some more, it is just a matter of someone introducing something that non-MMO'ers would find a fun use of their time.
    • Indeed. Lets hope www.autoassault.com does that :)
    • Hear hear. Before World of Warcraft, I would not have ever even CONSIDERED paying for an MMORPG. I had, in the past, tried Ultima Online and Everquest on freeshards, and Anarchy Online, but couldn't get past their atrocious interfaces and unintuitive gameplay.

      WoW gave me a basic 'feel' of what to look for in MMORPG's and the courage to try out other games that require monthly fees. And I still play WoW from time to time. It did a fantastic job of making the not only the MMORPG but the IDEA of an MMORP

  • Whoa, step back a bit. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Somatic ( 888514 ) on Friday November 04, 2005 @11:20AM (#13950687) Journal
    EQ was the king for years with 400k subscribers, now WoW is with 4 million. Even though I only played WoW in beta and didn't find it interesting, I respect the numbers.

    But you have to ask yourself: how big do we need MMOGs to get? The movie Titanic broke box office records, but it was a steaming pile of shit.

    Wow has set the bar, and as far as I'm concerned, it's a good bar. It's a healthy bar. 4 million is a damn healthy bar. If you want to go more mass-market than that, you have to go into areas that don't appeal to me as a MMOG player.

    At some point, you have to say, "We're making enough money to satisfy our art", and leave it at that.

    I don't think I want to see the MMOG that attracts 1 billion subscribers.

    • This is in agreement with the parent post.

      Why don't people get it? Titanic the motherload of movies made something like $500M. WoW has 4M as a user base all paying around $15/month. Unless my math skills are really in the shitter, that's $60M/month or $720M/year. Given the life span of a MMP that beats the crap out of Titanic, or any Hollywood production any day. MMPs can make litterally billions of dollars if they play their cards right. Blizzard has, we can do the math when they shut down the last Realm.

      • This is why you may see the number of MMORPG's produced actually accellerate. The current crop is what you get when people invest hoping to be the next 400k superstar. Now that the bar is 10x that, expect more, and larger and more professional productions to come about.

    • But you have to ask yourself: how big do we need MMOGs to get? The movie Titanic broke box office records, but it was a steaming pile of shit.

      But it broke box office records. The people ultimately in charge of things, the owners of the company, usually own it to make money. Therefore, if a piece of shit movie breaks box office records, then a piece of shit movie gets a sequel. And if a piece of shit MMOG gets lots of subscribers, then that piece of shit was a shining success for its makers. For the reco

  • it's always the same. i can remember, some years ago, people were complaining about the dullness of computer games, no innovations and all that kinda stuff. then, an innovation actually happens, like todays mmogs. now? people keep complaining and want the next (r)evolution.

    putting all the nuisances (like monthly fees) aside, WOW indeed is a game that never had happend before, and 4 million subscribers is also a thing that never had happen before. and now?

    yeah, 4 millions is ok, but we've got 6+ billion

    • yeah, 4 millions is ok, but we've got 6+ billion people on earth! man, that's just stupid. what do you say when all the 6 billions are playing mmogs? 6 billions is ok, but there may be other civilizations in outer space?

      But before getting to them, we need to add splitscreen play to MMOGs, together with appropriate control schemas, so that people can make more future players while playing ;).

  • The Grind is the problem. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JavaLord ( 680960 ) on Friday November 04, 2005 @12:34PM (#13951419) Journal
    WoW is successful because for the first 30 levels you can accomplish something every time you log in. I realize that they follow the skinners box method of making things more difficult as you go along to keep you hooked, but I think MMORPG's will succeed when their gameplay (combat) is a compelling enough reason to play, rather than just grinding out for the next level/epic item.
    • Actually, this is why I love being a scrapper in City of Heroes. It's the closest thing I've ever seen in an MMORPG to approximating a Quake character.

      I'm still waiting for that MMORPG that has traditional classes, plus one special class, a Quake-like character where damage output is related to pure monkey skill rather than "click click click" stuff. I don't have to "level up to 50" to reach the end game. I just pick up my sword, and if I'm good enough, I run in on the dragon along with the more traditio
  • My 2 cents on monthly fees is that they are completely craptastic for the Hardcore Casual Player like my self. I really do enjoy these games but I find the payment structure asstastic if you only spend 3-4 hours a week playing.

    While perhaps not completely sane, it would be great to if companies could institute a per minute billing scenario. It would not be that hard to do as the game already tracks your logging in and out. So very much like cell phones that have payment plans that can be filled up, somethin
  • The one thing that the monthly fee absolutely wrecks is the gaming hiatus. Say you want to take a 6 month break from a game, then hop back on with full access to all your characters and items. This is something that most MMORPGs don't support, and even the ones that do support this it require more than the minimum effort of clicking on an icon to resubscribe to the game. However, in a game with no monthly fee, you can keep coming back to it years later as long a minimum of activity is maintained. For in
    • I have seen games threaten to blow away your (non-trivial level) characters (EverQuest did this) if you quit. But that was always just hot air. Letting you think this might happen keeps people paying even if they quit.

      But I have played a lot of games, UO, EQ, Asheron's Call, Dark Age of Camelot, Horizons, Star Wars Galaxies, The Matrix Online, City of Heroes, World of Warcraft. I have yet to see one that I've quit that hasn't sent me e-mails begging me to come back, "Your characters are all still here!"

      H
      • FFXI used to have a rather ridiculously short amount of time before they would delete your characters (3 months initially). I quit for 6 months, came back, and yep, my character was gone. Didn't hurt me that much (I hadn't gotten very far initially), but they still deleted it.

        Of course, as it turns out, they didn't really delete characters. They had the whole Return to Vana'diel thing, and people could get their characters back if they'd been unsubscribed for more than 3 months, so obviously they were still

  • So little advancement since UO... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'd like to see a game using a fully realtime 3D engine to present a world that appeals to me.

    Ultima Online was great and I completely understand the limitations of 2D and the dialup Internet of 1997.

    Star Wars Galaxies, for example, has the benefit of an exponential increase in processing power, line bandwidth, and even community experience. Yet, we're stuck with the same obstacles of UO and even a few more.

    1) Awkward and uninituive controls that harken back to Resident Evil on the PSX. Would it have bee
    • Because nothing creates the "Star Wars" feeling quite like killing llama-giraffes by the hundreds.

      Because nothing creates the "Star Wars" feeling quite like being issued a high tech blaster, then seeing it take dozens of shots to kill a god damned llama-giraffe.

      And you haven't lived until you've seen 8 guys standing around a single doggie thingie, 7 shooting it with various laser guns, and one dousing it with a FREEKIN' FLAMETHROWER, for thirty seconds, and the thing doesn't run screaming after the first on
      • Speaking of SWG, about 80% of my time was spent being a dancer, as that was the one thing no other games had. Yeah a few had some kind of /dance command, but not with dozens of protracted options, to say nothing of it actually being a viable career. And the other 20% was shooting the damned llama-giraffes with said dancer. She was also a pistoleer, for roleplaying reasons, which sucked compared to all other combat classes, but she did have her own cantina.

        Hmmm, I wonder if the cantina will be resurrect-a
  • "In reality, people jump off one MMO in favor of the newest release."

    Maybe that's because no MMORPG company got off its ass and upgraded their experience with the loads of money they get from the game. Hey we're making millions, lets all buy yachts now. Tomorrow comes: well, we made our money, so I guess we should be happy. Realistically speaking, if one MMORPG decided to invest 5% of the money it profitted back into the game, it'd last 30 years. Of course, the industry... failing to realize this...
  • I always aid I would never pay for a game montly but now I've been paying for eve online for 19 months and have 7 months of paid subscriptions already ahead of me, over the last few months eve has grown really fast and is getting more players ever week and alot of them are new people who've enver played an mmorg before and lots are x wow players looking for something new but before wow had never played an mmorg, the market is growing and its growing fast there loads of small mmmorgs out there now.
  • I am not exactly sure what their revenue model is, but Flyff is an interesting one--free. How do they do it? I can't speak for how good it is story wise since it was only just released yesterday, but interface and graphics wise, it is very nice. Still wondering how they are paying for it though. In case you want to see it (http://english.flyff.com./ [english.flyff.com]

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