Beating WoW At Its Own Game 383
The BBC has up a short piece on the hopes of game developers and investors to 'beat World of Warcraft'. Representatives for the upcoming Age of Conan, recently-released Lord of the Rings Online, and Star Wars Galaxies all discuss what it's like competing in a post-WoW world. Funcom game director Gaute Godoger has a point when he says, "The industry so needs competition to World of Warcraft ... We need other strong games that can make people understand that there's more to it than WoW." The article discusses some of the features each of these games offer that differ from WoW, and theorizes a bit on where the MMOG genre will go next.
No first post (Score:5, Funny)
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Links about WoW addiction:
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/WOW_widow [yahoo.com]
http://soulkerfuffle.blogspot.com/2006/10/view-fr
http://wowdetox.com/ [wowdetox.com]
http://wowrecovery.com/ [wowrecovery.com]
http://deletewow.com/ [deletewow.com]
One out of many particularly sad stories: http://www.wowdetox.com/view.php?number=13640 [wowdetox.com]
Re:No first post (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps the real point here is, "people who have problems with addiction shouldn't engage in behaviors that can, *for some people*, be addicting"?
I mean, comeon, I like a self-reinforcing, carrot-stick game well enough, but lately I can't get around to playing it. The game (or any game) on its own isn't nefarious. But, I suppose we have to villianize it *somehow*, right?
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WOW Credit Card [worldofwarcraft.com]
too damned funny. But it really cements the notion that WOW is in it's own league among other games, no?
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But I could never, never take that thing out of my wallet with a straight face.
Re:No first post (Score:5, Insightful)
But in the end it still came down to a decision, and as much as we would like it to be otherwise, we are faced with the reality that we are responsible for our actions regardless of the factors that influenced the decision. You can be predisposed to being fat, but it does not excuse you in the eyes of society. When it really comes down to it, gun to the head, people will see bodyfat as a reflection on that person's character. Whether or not the circumstances are "fair" doesn't make much of a difference.
An alcoholic can blame alcohol all he or she wants, but the responsibility will sit with the alcoholic for their actions. And it's their prerogative to make the right decisions and accept the consequences. It may seem harsh, but I do prefer it over the alternative, where decisions are made for me by someone else.
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All your actions and behaviors have a chemical component. That is how the brain works.
An alcoholic can blame alcohol all he or she wants, but the responsibility will sit with the alcoholic for their actions. And it's their prerogative to make the right decisions and accept the consequences. It may seem harsh, but I do prefer it over the alternative, where decisions are made for me by someone else.
You
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No, WoW did not destroy your marriage. It didn't show up and sleep with your wife. You and your wife's inability to deal with problems in your marriage destroyed it. It's not nefarious, it's a game that millions (literally) play without it messing up their lives.
In short, "save it for Livejournal".
Re:No first post (Score:4, Funny)
i don't like that logic, it makes it sound like it's my fault... i much prefer arguments that leave me blameless and say that there is nothing wrong with me.
Re:No first post (Score:4, Funny)
You might want to cancel the 3.4.10 patch. That's all I'm going to say.
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Do some research (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, I rant, but being an avid fan of SWG before the Combat Upgrade, I can tell you that SWG is no longer the game it was. And then it was beaten while it was down with the New Game Experience which turned it into an action game instead of an RPG. Poor SOE, if you want to release a new RPG, do it. Don't replace what people were playing with something else, ESPECIALLY if they are paying a subscription.
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SWG one of the first MMOs? (Score:2, Insightful)
Hmmm... didn't SW:G come out after Dark Age of Camelot which was a nice MMO that was based around the concept of "Do Everquest but make it fun"?
Maybe the SW:G team could have spent some time with the Everquest team to help them avoid making the exact same missteps?
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Anyway, Wikipedia has a good history of MMORPGs, [wikipedia.org] although they only define three distinct generations. I think the popularity of games like Lineage and the visibility of games like SWG caused the WoW phenomenon, and should be seen as the fathers of the current generation of games.
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Here's some reading to catch you up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_MMORPGs [wikipedia.org]
Everything I see it mention of which I have any knowledge is correct to my recollection. I heard about Meridian 59, but I didn't enter the MMO world until UO when I started in October 97 I beat tested AC, DAoC, AO, SWG, Guildwars, Lineage, Shadowbane, D&DO and a few others. UO, WoW and LotRO are
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But yes, my initial post (somebody mod it down, please) was based on memory, and my memory was faulty. AC was released almost simultaneously with Everquest. Lineage actually predated Everquest in Asia, although it didn't reach America for a few years. Everything else I wrote (especially th
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I cannot remember what year SWG came out (2000? 01?), but what I do distinctly remember is that Raph Koster was in charge of development and production overall AFTER he left the Ultima Online development team where he'd been for about two years after retail release (release September 1997).
If Raph's experience in developing and launching UO (by all means one of THE first MMO games) wasn't good enough, then what be
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Some suggestions (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Either make me pay a monthly fee, or make me pay for the client, not both. Charging for both makes it seem like you're not convinced I'll want to keep playing. By all means have a CD distributed in stores at a price that covers costs; it's just the phenomenon of paying $50 for the chance to pay another $10 that doesn't make sense.
2. If you can't make the client free, make it transferable, so I can sell it if I decide I don't want to keep playing. There's no way I'm going to spend $50 on a game I may not even like, if I can't resell it to get back some of the cash.
3. Include Mac and Linux. I don't run Windows and won't run Windows. There are millions of us, and we have very few MMORPG choices right now, so it's an easier niche for you to get into than the more saturated Windows market.
4. Make it possible to play the entire game in cooperative mode. I have zero interest in deathmatches.
5. I prefer SF to fantasy, yet most RPGs are fantasy. I guess it's easier to artificially limit the players and work around plot issues when you have magic around and a lack of fast long distance transport and communication technologies.
6. Don't riddle the game with spyware and have an abusive EULA. Yeah, WoW got away with it, but that's no excuse.
7. Don't require bleeding-edge hardware. My next machine is probably going to be a laptop with Intel graphics.
Generally, the idea I'm presenting is to try and go for the potential players who are not being served at all by the current online gaming market, rather than to compete to steal customers who already have a choice of a half dozen games they could be playing. You know, try to be the Wii rather than the PS3.
Re:Some suggestions (Score:5, Insightful)
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Oh, and I forgot one:
8. Make it so you can play for a couple of hours
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Dig around, there are MMOs that meet all 8 of your c
One of the few good things about WOW (Score:2)
WOW will run on less than cutting edge hardware. A friend of mine is a WOW player, and while I'm not sure what what the exact spec of his machine is, I do know that it has onboard intel graphics and that he bought it second hand for sixty pounds when another friends workpalce sold them off.
On a slight tangent, I've been saying for a while now that one of the things that could help invigorate t
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All I can say is that what the grandparent post wants, he gets it almost 100% in EVE.
Point-by-point, here is it.
1, 2 and 3.
Client is freely downloadable. LIMITLESS number of 14-day trials available (upgradeable at any time to full accounts), characters NEVER get deleted (theoretically, they should be eligible for deletion after 6 months of inactivity, but no purge was ever made and it's not planned to ever happend).
You onl
Re:Some suggestions (Score:5, Informative)
3 - If there actually were millions of Linux using MMOGers out there, they'd make a client. But there aren't (not trying to troll, just being realistic). Cedega/Wine has several MMOs running as a secondary option.
4 - I don't remember ever playing any form of deathmatch(pvp?) in any MMOG. PvE is the focus of most MMOGs. PvP is usually a side game you can participate in if you choose.
5 - Are you saying that warp drives and ansibles are somehow more realistic than a teleportation spell? There are plenty of Sci-Fi based MMOGs...SWG, AO, EVE, TMO, etc.
6 - I think WoW is the only one to ever actually do it. Are there MMOs with tons of spyware all over?
7 - I've played several MMOs on my crappy laptop with Intel Graphics, including WoW and EQ, among others.
The Linux gaming market (Score:4, Interesting)
I won't lie, the Linux and Mac gaming market just isn't there in force yet. However, I don't look at this as a hindrance to entering the market; I look at it as an opportunity.
Linux and MacOS is growing. Especially with Microsoft's feeble latest attempt at an operating system, I think that more and more people will be looking at it as a viable home computing platform. Those people are going to want games. There just aren't that many available yet, especially in the MMORPG market.
If I were an MMORPG developer, I'd be jumping on this chance. I'd use as many cross-platform libraries as I could, and that would be one of my major selling points: Whether you're using Windows, MacOS, or Linux, you can play our game. You might make a mediocre dent in the Windows market, probably trailing behind the 800 pound gorilla of WoW. But you would virtually own the MacOS and Linux market for these types of games.
As those markets continue to grow, so does your game, and the market for Windows-only games shrinks. Even Windows users may start preferring it because they can play with their friends who are using Macs and Linux boxes, not just the ones who are beholden to Uncle Bill. Also, as a development company, you gain experience at developing cross-platform games, so the games you come out with in the future will likely be better than other's who are playing catch-up to the new world of multiple OS's out there.
Personally, I think developing games only for Windows is a really bad business gamble. You're basically betting your financial future on Macs and Linux not gaining any market share in the future. I think that's extremely short-sighted.
Oh, and just as an added note, don't forget that in the case of an MMORPG, we're not talking about developing the whole game for multiple platforms, only the client. The primary function of these clients is simply to display graphical representations of network data efficiently and prettily to the user. A very powerful and popular cross-platform graphics library already exists (OpenGL) that will handle the lion's share of this work. In my opinion, if you're a graphics application developer and you're not using it, you're being pretty stupid. As for the back-end server software, unless you plan on selling it or otherwise distributing it, you're free to lock yourself into whatever platform strikes your fancy.
Re:Some suggestions (Score:5, Informative)
1. I think it's fairly obvious now that the retail box is to pay for the time and effort of developing the client and the monthly fees are to cover bandwith and server maintenance.
2. Allowing you to sell your account leads to the sale of high level accounts which denies them money for having that same player buy the box new and level on his own.
3. More than a few MMOs these days do have a Mac client. Plus if you're die-hard against Windows Cedega supports quite a number of MMOs as well.
4. I've played a few MMOs and with the exception of Guild Wars none of them focused on PvP
5. Yeah there's really not a whole lot they can do about that. Most RPGs in the non-computerized world are fantasy as well. Just the nature of the beast. That said look into Hellgate:London coming soon.
6. Spyware? I assume you're referring to the WoW check for hacks? I wouldn't go so far as to call it spyware. Especially when it doesn't talk to Blizzard unless it finds something worth reporting. As for EULA's
7. I played City of Heroes on my notebook with Intel video. WoW is currently playing on a 3-year-old machine. You can't crank the graphical settings but these games don't require "bleeding-edge" hardware.
Hope this helps
Kleedrac
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The fee for the client is mostly to encourage subscriptions, IMO. Once someone has invested $50, they're not likely to subscribe for a month and then drop it, or they'll have wasted $60, not $10. I think the pricing is determined by how to maximize revenue, not how to cover specific costs -- though it's important that subscripti
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I also agree on the necessity to design for lower end machines. I think the reason WoW is as popular as it is is mainly a function of how it can run on such a wide range of machines.
Lastly, as much as I hate spyware and invasive anti-cheat programs...
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Another free to play game is Last Chaos [aeriagames.com].
No Grinding in LOTR Online? (Score:5, Interesting)
From the article:
How does this system eliminate grinding? It seems to me that it would exacerbate the grinding problems as players would grind even more in order to get the additional power and titles conferred by grinding mid-level mobs.
Re:No Grinding in LOTR Online? (Score:5, Informative)
IMO grinding means killing monsters for no reason except experience and money.
"Farming" is killing monsters repeatedly until the item you want drops.
"Kill counts" are the number of monsters you must kill in order to complete a quest. Some consider this grinding, but I do not since it has an end and a purpose.
From what I heard (never played it) EQ required grinding just to reach the next level.
I feel that WoW successfully did away with the senseless grinding. There is absolutely no reason for any character to ever have to grind by my definition. There are always more quests to do at your level; they may not be in your race's zones if you think that linearly, but they do exist. If you're trying to get a certain piece of gear (or getting gear to sell) then you'll be out killing specific mobs for quite some time and gaining money and XP to boot until you get that gear. Still, you have a purpose and there is an end point.
I beta tested and bought LotRO (even though I posted here and elsewhere that I wouldn't: the idea of a pay once and never again fall back game for when I [rarely] don't feel like playing WoW was just too tempting). LotRO reminds me of Ultima IX: Ascension. It's a very linear story with lots of little branches. You are free to go and do whatever you wish, but the main story will not progress until you complete the chapter you're in. I have experienced only one instant where I felt grinding was necessary. I was about to complete a quest that would take me out of the current zone. I knew I hadn't defeated a certain boss, but I could not do it by myself or at my current level. I went and killed a few more monsters to get the last 15% of my level, went and killed that boss and then went to complete the zone quest. (I was rewarded as well since two excellent items dropped off that boss.)
Still if I had looked for a fellowship or just accepted that I didn't finish a quest in that zone, I could have continued on my way without grinding. I have a few RL friends that simply weren't on at that time, so I doubt I'll ever have to grind like that again.
So, the same as WoW, then? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, I'm not arguing with your assessment of either. It's just silly nevertheless to hear the LOTRO creators make such claims as that they're beating WoW by eliminating grinding (when WoW didn't require any either) or that titles for the number of creatures killed are what turns grind into non-grind.
It's blatantly silly. If anyone despised WoW's "collect 25 murloc heads... and only 1 murloc out of 20 has a head" quests and considers those "grind", then adding a title for number of murloc kills doesn't turn it into non-grind. If anything, it just adds insult to injury. The _last_ thing I'd want, when I'm bored out of my skull killing those murlocs... and yet another one was headless, is a message to pop up telling me that I got some title for a million murlocs killed. Not only it wouldn't make it magically "non-grind", it would be a reminder of all the points before when I grinded murlocs for some dumb quest.
Basically I'm used to hearing silly boasts from people making yet another "X killer" (where X can be WoW, iPod, etc) or "beating X at its own game", but this kind ranks not only as silly, but as... clueless. If the best they can come up with is "I know, let's add some titles", then they're truly and completely clueless. They didn't actually look hard at what they're copying, what works, what doesn't, what's not what the players want, and what they could design otherwise. They're taking wild guesses at something they don't even freaking understand, and hoping WoW would just have a heart attack so they can claim the kill.
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They even have monsters that are extra-hard and give extra-low exp/loot. They call these monsters "elite" to trick players into thinking they should go after them.
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There are lots of good quests in WoW. Any inst
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If you think that quest-grinding is bad in WoW, you never played DAoC. That was some seriously painful grinding, and frequently without the quests to make the objectives interesting.
The game's saving grace was the PvP endgame (and, to an extent, the 20-24, 25-29, 30-34, etc battlefields), which WoW could stand to learn from, IMHO. But man, getting there was brutal. You frequently didn't even get good equipment rewards for quests, which WoW was pretty good at with its pre-BC areas, and is top-notch with
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I can appreciate the emphasis on quests, but the biggest issue I have with that is the absurd amount of traveling required. It gets exhausting having to r
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The Scouring of the Shire?
Try better competitors, to start. (Score:4, Interesting)
Star Wars Galaxies has gone from 'flawed, but promising' to 'what has science wrought?!' over the course of its existence, a stunning reversal of the usual trend to launch with missing content and patch in later, to launching with missing content and tearing most of what's left out later. Servers are ghost towns, good going there, guys.
Anarchy Online has had more ups and downs than a roller coaster (abysmal beta, spectacularly awful launch, promised lore/television/multimedia tie-ins that failed to materialize... and a free year of basic play offer to bolster subscription numbers), but at least Age of Conan has some interesting gimmicks planned for it.
WoW may be simplistic compared to its predecessors and competitors, but it's been as well-produced as any other Blizzard product-- that is to say, polished to an eye-searing shine. In order to pull the same thing off, their competitors will need to get out of the 'launch first, patch later' mindset, which will absolutely require the trust of the people that fund the projects. Without that element of risk-taking on their part, there's no way that any development team will be able to pull the same thing off. All of that development and polish takes time and effort, which are fueled by money... and the precedent of shipping something that runs, rather than something that shines is still much stronger than WoW's literally phenomenal success.
Polish is the Defining Characteristic for Blizzard (Score:5, Insightful)
I've found that to be the case with most Blizzard games. They don't do anything particularly innovative (Real Time Strategy existed before Warcraft, MMORPGs existed before WoW), but the level of polish on a Blizzard game is far above and beyond any other game in the same genre.
Heck, look at Starcraft. That game is still being sold and played, despite approaching 10 years of age. Reason: the game was simple to understand and play, and the races were far more balanced than in any other game of that time. Nothing really new or innovative, but the overall execution was of high quality, ensuring continued success.
Re:Polish is the Defining Characteristic for Blizz (Score:2)
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No Mention of EVE Online? (Score:4, Insightful)
EVE Online is one of the largest MMORPGs out there. Its also possibly the only successful science fiction based MMO game. Given these two characteristics, combined with the fact that EVE's developer team is much more hands-off with regard to player-to-player interaction, I'm surprised that EVE was nowhere to be found the article.
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- It's not fantasy, but fantasy is the smart move because it is easier to understand and create; everyone knows the "ground rules."
- It's not warm or cuddly. You can be 5 hours in and get (metaphorically speaking) lured into an alley, have your throat slashed, and everything you own taken from you. (Scan-probing pirates in missions, anyone?) That's not smart because it
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http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart7.html [mmogchart.com]
Anyone know of any newer data?
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Massive players compared to readership? (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder how the numbers of players they need compares to the readership for the works they're based on.
The success of WoW (Score:4, Insightful)
First and foremost, they had an already existing background world. That started it off well. Warcraft has a LONG and quite well known world. Not with movie goers, not with bookworms, but with computer players. That sets it apart from SWG and LOTR. Yes, both have a large fanbase, but those aren't necessarily gamers. WoW had a gamer fanbase from the start.
Second, it's easy. Sorry, dear WoW players, but that game is easy. Easy. Easy. I know a five year old who's leveled to 60 without any real difficulty. But that actually meant that it was one of the first MMORPGs that drew the attention of people who're not hardcore number crunchers and grinders, who don't first of all consult a billion pages about the game to find out whether spell X or spell Y is in situation Z more appropriate.
It was basically the mix of having a good player base at its start and being easy enough that people who got invited by those who knew its name (i.e. the "old" Warcraft players) didn't get bored with the detail work.
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But... that's not really where the real game is at. It's almost like the entire process of leveling up is merely a training session for you to get to know your character so that you can move on to something actually difficult. It allows you to acquire a very close understand of your character and how your skills and abilities work together.
The real challenge is the so called "endgame" content. Yes, there's plenty of people who will also trash this c
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That's not to say it was different in other MMORPGs. And I also don't claim that this is a bad thing. It's quite relaxing and sometimes I ponder going back to WoW. In contrast, ra
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TLF
How to Beat WoW at its own game... (Score:4, Insightful)
You need only look so far as Diablo and Diablo 2 to realize that when it comes to addicting grindfests, Blizzard is king. Attempting to take Blizzard down on their home turf is a ridiculous goal, and one that should be abandoned by any MMORPG hopeful.
I can't say I pay attention to subscription numbers, but to my knowledge the most successful MMORPG outside of WoW is EVE. EVE also happens to be fundamentally different from WoW.
The problem with these companies is that they're trying to make "WoWLotR" or "WoWConan". They see WoW as a formula they can copy and make money from. What they fail to realize is that the "GTA Clone" strategy doesn't work with MMORPGS. Even if you were able to make a game as good as WoW was when it launched you're still 2 and a half years behind on new content updates, balance tweaks and cosmetic upgrades. Even if you can make the game as good as WoW is now, you still don't have the 8 million strong playerbase. Your game literally needs to be significantly better than WoW straight out of launch.
No, you can't beat WoW at its own game. You can wait for it to eventually fade and then stab it when its weak, but that's a long ways off yet. If you want a successful MMORPG, it needs to be different from WoW. It needs to do the things people wanted from WoW but didn't get. I doesn't even have to be in a fantasy setting. I know I'd enjoy a Dynasty Warriors MMORPG, were it done right (we probably don't have the technology to make that as awesome as it could be, sadly).
In summary, trying to beat WoW at what WoW does best (it's own game) right now is like trying to beat an olympic athlete in a marathon when they have an 8 mile head start.
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You want to beat WoW in terms of player base? Make a better game that fixes its most glaring problems (PvP being one of them, easy mode another, no player content another). That's the
Step 1: better artwork, not better graphics (Score:2, Interesting)
The quality and imagination of the artwork in World of Warcraft is one of the main, and often-overlooked
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Most people miss the difference between graphics and artwork. I missed it myself until a few years ago.
People asked me why I never played EQ. My knee jerk reaction was "I hated the graphics." They came back with "What? The graphics are awesome." Technically, yes, EQ graphics were awesome: high polygons, high shading, decent models. It was the artwork that I didn't like. I despise most games that try to look realistic... and miss, terri
MMORPGs aren't just games... (Score:2, Insightful)
Play LOTRO (Score:2)
You can't move for the WoW refugees who are sick of the endless raid. But I think it says a lot you name facebook and myspace. Like it or not, WoW is the 12yr olds MMORPG, and that loses its appeal if your not 12 anymore.
Well ask someone who played them all (Score:4, Informative)
The oldest first, Star Wars Galaxies. Yes its launch was bugged, yes bugs took for ever to fix and yes SOE changed the nature of the game, in my opinion ruining it, with the CU and the NGE. Yet it remains one of the most ambitious titles. Player controlled economy with all equipment obtained through crafting NOT looting, yes this could mean that a new player who wasn't socially capable enough to find existing players, had a hard time getting the money to buy the equipment. I personally have helped plenty of newbies to get their decent starter kit. SWG had a nice community. It also remains alone in allowing you to combine classes as you saw fit. Sure, this did lead to some people trying to spec out uber combat classes and to wich SOE made the fatal mistake of them upping the high level content to those specced out players. Yes the doc-buff was the death of grouping BUT it tried.
A typical SWG quest, oh wait, nobody bothered with them because although some had nice writing the XP and loot sucked and so why bother, RPG for the story? Not in MMO land mate.
Everquest 2 too tried. FULL SPEECH! Read that again and realize that in 2007 NOT ONE SINGLE MMORPG EXCEPT EVERQUEST 2 HAS SPOKEN TEXT FOR ITS QUEST GIVERS. 2000 called, they want their text bubbles back. It also tried a new crafting system and upped the stakes in the graphics department. It didn't work. EQ2 is a nice enough game but it is also evercamp squared. A typical EQ2 quest goes like this. Kill 20 X, turn in, Kill 20 X, turn in, Kill 20 X, turn in, Kill 20 X, turn in, Kill rare spawn that only spawn on days with no y.
And then SOE changed the game again, the running animation now looks like an old fashioned slapstick and the death penalty was made so light it barely matters.
Next, there is WoW. A little known MMORPG that is managing to hang on somehow. Blizzard is to MMORPG's what Microsoft is to desktops. It does nothing new, it copied everything it does from everyone else and still it absolutly dominates. Does it have less bugs? No, read the forums, did it have an untroubled launch? Like hell, does it have excellent customer service? Still read the forums.
Its gameplay is a throwback to the orignal everquest with absolutly nothing new added. And yet. Something is right. (something is also wrong, but I am coming to that).
EVERY single SOE game has an engine that is claimed to be future-proof wich is why your computer right now will choke on it. Apparently nobody at SOE realized that a future proof engine is of no use unless the game itself has a future.
The WoW engine is NOT futureproof. Blizzard used an engine that computers of that day could run. Its relativly low power is hidden masterfully by their choice of art direction (hint to SOE, you need some) and it works. To a point. I am not alone in simply NOT like the graphics after prolonged exposure. It is worthy to note that of all the major MMORPG's in the west WoW is closest to the korean ones in the lack of being able to customize your avatars basic looks. Well I say avatar, WoW players tend to think of it as toons.
WoW is Everquest Lite done decently. It says a lot about the MMORPG market that this is high praise indeed. What turns people off sooner or later is that WoW copied everything from everquest including evergrind and evercamp. These things I could have done without.
A typical WoW quest goes like this. Loot item from X by killing it. Oops that one didn't have it, kill another, and another and another and another (repeat for several hours).
Next, another SOE title. Ambitous, certainly, trying new things, absolutly. Bugged, oh hell yes. I am talking offcourse about no other game then Vanguard.
More races then any other game and although a cynic might claim most are just color variations, they do have different starting areas/stories. More classes as well. An extra gameplay option in the form of diplomacy. A future proof engine (hint looks great, won't run) and lots of potential. And bugs. Lots of bugs. Basic stupid bugs that
Re:Well ask someone who played them all (Score:5, Funny)
Haven't seen Vanguard, but have you seen Guild Wars? The females in GW are very well-proportioned and well-animated. GW may have the highest 'pixellated boobie rating' of any MMOG out there, with excellent and attractive character designs.
This is important if, like me, you choose your character build based on what kind of backside you want to watch running across the landscape for hours on end.
Amen brother (Score:2)
I have the same basis for choosing my character, IF I am going to spend ages looking at it, it better have a nice ass.
Yes I have played Guild Wars and yes it does look nice. If I remember right it even has boob animator for the female hunter. NICE!
Sadly it the basic gameplay just never grew on me. The constant need to juggle your spells/skills around based on the area you were going into just got tiring.
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All MMO's? You fell way, way short.
I haven't played them all by any stretch. I'd be impressed at someone who did and was able to maintain the job to afford all of them. :-)
I received most of my experience from beta testing.
FunCom doesn't have the formula (Score:2)
What we have now in
Yes, there *is* more to it than WoW... (Score:3, Insightful)
WoW goes about as far as it's possible to go while still having what is very largely a static environment. Blizz are in the process of phasing in what essentially amounts to zone-wide games of domination, (if your faction holds all 3 or 4 castles in the zone at once, all players in your faction get a 5% damage bonus) but that still isn't what a vocal minority of players have expressed that they want.
What I've heard said minority in the playerbase saying it wants in terms of world pvp is a scenario where regions can literally be taken by one side or the other. In other words, although Hillsbrad for example might start out neutral/contested, there could be a scenario where Alliance players could invade it and it could literally become an Alliance zone. At the moment, zone allegiance is static; it never changes.
The problem with this sort of thing however is that there are technical issues with regards to implementing it, and that said technical issues are mostly above the industry's preferred pain threshold; especially considering that they involve introducing things that are radically outside the current paradigm. (At least from what I've seen) The other incentive for Blizzard NOT to introduce such things is that even though some players generally do want them, such players are a tiny minority. Most players are firmly addicted to ovine repetition such that if Blizzard *were* to start introducing genuinely innovative/novel aspects into the game, it'd probably scare the sheep away. That's something Blizz really don't want to do, because given that the sheep are the overwhelming majority, they're also where Blizz consistently will make most of their money.
If you look at the differences between WoW and UO in particular, what sets WoW apart isn't what Blizzard added to the model anywhere near as much as what they took away. UO was a lot more open-ended; yes there were dungeon crawls, but there was also a much more thorough economy, a somewhat more diverse reportoire of trade skills, and there were player created and run towns in some places due to the player real estate. In other words, the game wasn't only about "Go to X location and kill some monsters, or X dungeon and kill some more monsters there, or X set part of the map and kill other players there."
The real problem though, now that I look at it, isn't with the development industry. It's with the players themselves. If WoW has proven anything, it's overwhelmingly that players want an extremely narrow, object-oriented game environment for the most part. They need objectives spelled out for them extremely precisely. Maxis actually found out the same thing with The Sims; most human beings simply don't have the initiative or the intelligence required to set their own objectives within the game environment, but instead require the game designers to do it for them.
So yes...UO in particular and other games as well have showed us that there's a lot more to it than WoW, but what WoW itself and players' response to it has overwhelmingly shown is that neither the design industry nor the playerbase itself for the most part *wants* more. If Blizzard have any overwhelming talent, it is a talent for identifying and isolating those elements of fantasy which the gaming public want, and then regurgitating said elements back to the gaming public in an utterly McDonaldised way. They did this with both D2 and Starcraft as well as WoW. The end result is a game which is massively horizontal, rather than vertical. There's no depth whatsoever; it's based around literally mind-numbing repetition, but even though nearly the only two activities include killing monsters and finding gear with which to kill yet more monsters, the sheer number of different monsters and loot in themselves make the game sufficiently superficiallly interesting that you're able to at least temporarily (depending on your degree of intelligence, which thankfully for Blizzard, is minimal in the ca
Here's one of the big secrets: (Score:3, Insightful)
There are somewhere between fifteen and twenty million macs in use right now that are recent enough to run WoW. Even though these are people who have not chosen their platform to maximize the number of games available to them, let's say that one in ten has at least some interest in gaming occasionally.
That's about two million potential customers for whom there is very little product competition. A market that size is about a quarter of WoW's total playerbase, and far larger than most games ever see.
Blizzard is one of the few companies that has been bright enough to catch on to the value of making big-scale games for this incredibly ripe market, and I suspect that it has been a big contributor to their success. With luck, a few other big game authoring companies will figure out this trick as well.
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You want to go back to it?
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You mean UO? (Score:2)
All there, old man... Origin had that long before Blizzard even started to read documentation for networking.
Re:All of these games (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you mean "simplified interface" so that anyone and everyone who even attempts the game discovers how easy it is to get started and gets hooked within minutes. I've met some handicapped players including one guy who was completely immobilized except for his head. Seeing his joy at playing UO was heart-wrenching. I'm quite certain he is playing WoW and enjoying it even more because it's so much simpler than UO. Whenever someone complains about a game being "dumbed down," I think of him.
Obviously, WoW is so dumb it attracted over 8 million people because it IS easy to play. The most amazing part of WoW, though, is even though it's easy to get started and continue to play in a casual manner, it can get as complicated as you wish and require a great deal of research, modification and time in order to complete the more challenging quests and instances.
If there were more penalties, you'd have more people getting frustrated, giving up, logging off and canceling subscriptions. You wouldn't have nearly as large, varied or active the PvP community that does exist. I tried getting my wife involved in UO (pre-pvp consent) twice. Both times PKs ruined her experience and drove her away. I introduced her to WoW while I beta tested it and she's played constantly ever since. One more experience we get to share together.
There are enough penalties for death. You have to pay to repair your equipment, or if you cannot get back to your body (long distance, over active spawn, etc.) then you REALLY pay by rezzing at the graveyard and taking extra damage. Plus it's a penalty of time lost when you should be enjoying yourself instead of running back to your corpse.
That is the players' choice and the reason Blizzard introduced better items for casual players in Burning Crusade. (Plus that death penalty gets steeper.) Not everyone can commit the time or has the resources to run a raid, but I bet they would if they could.
There is absolutely no need to EVER grind in WoW. (**By "grind" I mean kill a monster for the sole purpose of experience gain.)
At launch there were 2500 quests per faction (Alliance, Horde); with BC I'd suspect it is now more like 5-6,000 per faction. My first character hit 60 within a few months (I'm a casual player who plays multiple characters at once) by only doing quests and running the instances associated with quests. There was never a point where I said "I'll go kill these wolves to gain my next level," it was always "Oh, look, I'll get my next level at my next quest turn in or while killing for that next quest."
Anyone who is "grinding" is ignorant of the available quests and simply doesn't understand how WoW is different from all those MMO's that came before it. For those that are ignorant, all it takes is a tell in the public channels asking "Where should a lvl xx go for quests?" I can reference the Prima strategy guide, wowwiki.com or any number of other resources if I cannot draw upon my own experience. There are so many quests, Blizzard had to up the quest log from 20 to 25 so people wouldn't have to do so much extra running back and forth. There is never any reason for a person's quest log to drop below 5 quests much less be empty.
By your definition of "truly great game," you just described Ultima Online as it existed in 1997-1999, and how the Felucca side of each shard still exists. I think most of us have grown beyond that.
By your complaints and suggestions I gather that you are an experienced gamer and one who participates in PvP. I've heard these same complaints from players over my 10 years of playing MMO's. Trust me, you are in the minority
Eve Online (Score:2)
PvP is the point, and flying together with pilots you respect and can count on is the real heart of this game.
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Yes there is a penalty for dieing. I have to run back to my body, which in some places is a long fscking way away. If I die before a mob dies, I don't get XP for it. In a fare number of quests if I die, the area respawns before I can get back to my body. If I kill the mob I was after, but get killed by adds, sometimes the mob I want despawns before I can get back (meaning I have to wait around and do it all over again.) If I resurrect at the graveyard I have 10 minutes of being an utter weakling. Maybe it's not harsh enough for you. That's fine, the game isn't for you. Go play DDO, I hear the penalty for dieing there is quite a bit harsher.
Meaning the penalty for dieing in WoW is about 10 extra minutes of wasted time (if you figure in the time needed to farm the money for the repair bills). Yawn. That's so harsh, I'm just not sure I can bear it.
Every RPG ever has grind. You go on quests, typically to kill things/get things to get experience to gain levels to improve your skills to go on more quests.
See, most of what's considered "RPGs" now isn't about RP at all. Every *real* RPG ever had no grind at all. "Grinding" by its very nature pretty much precludes RP entirely. RP = Role Play. That means you imagine yourself as another character, and try to think like that character and act like that cha
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A master programmer passed a novice programmer one day. The master noted the novice's preoccupation with a hand-held computer game. ``Excuse me,'' he said, ``may I examine it?''
The novice bolted to attention and handed the device to the master. ``I see that the device claims to have three levels of play: Easy, Medium, and Hard,'' said the master. ``Yet every such device has another level of play, where the device seeks not to conquer the human, nor to be conquered by the human.'
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This is the ice cream kaon.
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Re:How do you beat WoW at it's own game? (Score:4, Funny)
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I believe as far as leveling up though, in LOTRO quests are a lot more important than simple grinding. So far the only time I have been really out repetively killing the same thing over and over again is just to make some money.
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Each LOTRO client comes with a "buddy key" or something to the effect that allows you to give a free trial to someone else, so it probably would not be too much trouble to obtain a free trial.
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I do think it sucks you have to pay for the client and pay a monthly fee. The client should at least include 3 mont
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...I have a hard time seeing how people can justify regularly PAYING to play a game unless they are indeed playing it near non-stop. A habit I have unfortunately witnessed up close and found to be quite annoying. I'm just glad that Quake II actually took some skill, otherwise I might feel as if I had been wasting my time on constant deathmatch back in the day...
I justify it like this: even paying on a month-by-month basis (the most expensive option), WoW costs me the price of about two movie tickets, about five cups of coffee, or one halfway decent steak. In exchange for that, I get to play in a large cartoony world with lots of good friends without having to compete every second. I can quest if I want to or screw around exploring if I want to. There is no requirement to be 1337. And, to be honest, I think it's precisely for this reason that WoW is so popula
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Will all of those games pull people away from WoW? Yes, for a short term. Any non-perpetual game will distract someone for a week, perhaps a month, but in the meantime they'll keep their WoW account active, every night when they finish playing game X they'll log into WoW just to "check on things," and when they have finished game X they'll be right back in WoW.
I've seen this happ
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And nope, no multiplatform client, though there are a bunch of people running it on linux via Cedega.
And you don't need a 'stick' when you have a mouse. It's more strategy than twitch shooting, though the twitch element is there. (Recently lost a t1 cruiser because I didn't get the nos on the assault frig fast enough.)
Because they can't? (Score:5, Interesting)
- Funcom: makers of Anarchy Online, launched as the buggiest pile of shit in recorded history. Read the reviews on Something Awful, and know that they're actually going soft on it. The game was actually buggier than that. Also bear in mind that that's not at launch, that's after Funcom had been given more time to fix it, and had proclaimed it 110% fixed and working as intended. Yet people fell through the ground and/or started swimming in the ground, enemies attacked through walls, enemy melee attacks had longer range than a sniper rifle, doors were a swirling graphics error, balance in _all_ aspects was a sick joke, crashes and disconnects were common, getting trapped in scenery was also common, missions were randomly generated crap from the same template (e.g., you actually had to kill everyone in a "stealth" or "infiltration" mission to get the token), etc, etc, etc. It says something about the kind of people who'd proclaim that to be working as intended.
Heck, even the whole freaking factions were so messed up that faction 1 got more money and better equipment, faction 2 just got shafted, and faction 3 didn't even have a shop above newbie level. How's that for balance? Imagine joining, say, the Horde in WoW and discovering that your side doesn't even have more than the newbie areas in the game.
So basically forget these guys, they just _can't_ design a competitor to WoW. All they can do is hope that someone else comes along and kills it.
- SWG: it stayed afloat at all because of being a merchandising exercise (you know, like putting Darth Vader's head on a t-shirt: you hope people will buy it just because it's official merchandise), _not_ because of having good design. It was the game that was awaited by _millions_ of SW nerds like it's the second coming of Obi Wan, and it just managed to disappoint almost all of them. Either right away, or in the many changes, culminating with the NGE that turned the whole game into a whole other _genre_. Among many other sins.
And reading TFA just reminds me of another thing: the team also always had a thorough contempt for the players, and had no qualms with making excuses or telling outright lies. And I see it continues to this day. E.g., now they're introducing pets as some exciting brand-new feature... never mind that it was there before they removed it in the NGE, pissing off everyone whose class had been eliminated. E.g., claiming that reducing the classes was because of noticing what players do and want is... rich. It's like claiming that you kicked someone in the balls because he obviously wanted that. E.g., the excuse that they were the first and that excuses their mistakes... no it doesn't. There were things known not to work long before, some since the time of MUDs, the SWG team just chose to ignore everything. And at any rate, by the time they did some of their biggest blunders, such as the NGE, that was already after a decade of MMOs. They simply didn't have that excuse any more. Etc.
At any rate, to return to the main idea: everyone who is still there, is there because it's SW. _Not_ because the SWG team can design a good game.
- Turbine: Well, these guys did make Asheron's Call, which was rather popular at one point. (Even if mainly due to being the place where you won't get ganked instantly like on UO.) So at least at one point they did have the mojo to challenge the kings of the hill.
Then they seem to have forgotten how.
AC2 was a flop, and its long list of mistakes could make a case study in how _not_ to go about designing a MMO. It seemed to actually go out of the way to be the opposite of what the players wanted in at least two dozen aspects, or at least miss the mark by a mile. Thoroughly clueless game design.
D&D Online was a thoroughly mediocre and uninspired game, which again managed to miss the mark of everything that most players want in a game. Not even a case of trying to innovate and happening to get it wrong, but just getting it wrong with