Attention all you MMORPGing Wierdo Dregs! You. Are. Offically On notice!

[Mist]

Originally Posted by kudos

You can pirate MMO's, it's just it takes a long fucking time to get it up and running and most don't have the patience or talent to pull it off.

You can pirate MMO clients. You will never, ever get the same game experience that paying customers receive, unlike when you pirate something such as Call of Duty 4.

[mutantmagnet]

Originally Posted by Digo

You'd think that rather than calling everyone a failure (except for Blizzard of course!) he'd try to figure out what they're doing right and copy that.

The structure of your sentence is off :/

He obviously doesn't want to copy Blizzard because Blizzard is just as much a diku game as the vast majority of mmos on the market.

From his rant it's obvious he wants to see a game where you want to play the game to build up your character's history and not its stats.

I think he doesn't give Eve credit because mechanically it is no different than UO and the history players can build up for themselves in that game is worthless in his opinion. (but maybe I'm wrong that assessment of his opinion)

[Jait]

Piracy is a cop out.

Is it a factor? Absolutely.


It's like anything in life that's hard. You find the excuse that people want to believe most. It's a lot easier than saying,

"Hey, it's a lot fucking harder to program PC games than console. Almost unimaginably so. You have a hundred more variables in hardware and software. And frankly console games are a sure thing that keeps us employed."

The advent of high-end Consoles were a dream come true for developers. But rather than say it got a lot easier when consoles became competitive with PC's in terms of high-end specs, they blame piracy. It's a one word answer to a complicated problem. If we all had the exact same computer, do you think it'd still be an issue?

[Zarcath]

With his unique outside the box approach and his enormous amounts of 'tude, how did NGE ever go wrong?

I think he's got the Foror+Tigule gameplan backwards. You bitch first, then design awesome shit. You don't design shit and then bitch about everyone else.

[Composter]

Originally Posted by Mist

Some article on Gamasutra completely ripped the whole move to consoles thing apart in response. He said there are over 198 million computers out there in used today with GeForce 5 and above Nvidia cards out there, plus similar numbers of equally powerful ATI cards. There's only 190 million PS2+PS3+Xbox 360+Wiis out there.

The only reason NOT to make PC games is piracy, and that does not apply in any way to MMOs.

The guy is totally right in that no one, except maybe CCP (not that I'm saying EVE is a good game by any standard of measuring actual game playability) is doing anything new at all, but his individual points are pretty retarded.

I'm not sure I agree with that. There are things about consoles that mainstream people "get" that they don't "get" about PCs. Console gaming has become mainstream, and PC gaming (as much as you would like to think it has) is not.

Therefore, if you want a truly "mainstream" MMO, you'll want to make it console. Previously, the big difference between console and PC mmo-ing, and the reason the whole MMO thing did pan out very well on console (hi2u phantasy star), is the keyboard. For a social experience, you need to be able to communicate easily and effectively. With VOIP, there is a chance that consoles could work in MMOs (except then you have VOIP with the halo kiddies in an MMO). Add in voice-activated commands (emotes or / console-commands) when pushing a controller button, and there IS a potential for a mainstream console MMO.

I do agree with 1 thing of the original posting, though, and that is that it would nice to see some people attempt to break the mold a little in MMO-land.

[mutantmagnet]

Originally Posted by Mist

You can pirate MMO clients. You will never, ever get the same game experience that paying customers receive, unlike when you pirate something such as Call of Duty 4.

Well I see something here that validates Ruben's point. What is the majority of fund being spent on after servers? Customer service.

What's so special about the customer service? CS does things like get you out of bugs that immobolize you and argue with you on bad credit card transactons.

No, I believe the major factor that private servers can't compete is that private servers won't do content updates. Without those updates customers wouldn't see as much continual value. Also I never used private servers, but I doubt they are willing to support as many player simultaneously as companies do.

But all that content updates for MMOs are essentially the same ensuring that the overwhelming majority of mmos are turned into clones of each other.

[Jait]

It's the tip of the iceburg. Allocation of time is another major factor which I meant to add to the last post.

If you own a PC and at least one MMO, you probably don't have a lot of extra free time for single-player games. And when you do, you'll jump on the console which is much better designed for not only quicker single-player games but fast action co-op.

Most of you folks on these boards are the literal bellwether for gaming. Just think about how you spend your time, and what you *really* want without bullshitting yourself, and you'll probably find quite a few of the answers to the questions asked here. It's a lot easier than typing a 90 page synopsis on what's wrong these days with gaming. Or rather, what's right with gaming. I'm not really unhappy, and I don't think most other folks are either. It's just fun to bitch.

[Hatorade]

Only need to mention two games when you talk about Piracy. Titan Quest and Sins of Solar Empire. Factor sites like Goozex - Trade video games for Sony Playstation 3, PS2, Microsoft Xbox 360, PC, Nintendo Wii, Gamecube, PSP, DS, GBA, Dreamcast, Mac - Your game trading community and yeah.

[kasey]

This is what i say for a year now. The whole industry is total garbage. There is no innovation, there is no quality there is only one big beta we pay for and developers who are totally out of touch with the way the players actually play the game. See AgeofConan as newest member of the family of dumb mmos who have way too few real content. Thank you for beta testing, i might drop by in 2-3 years when it has more then 1 month worth of content.

How many times did you read patch notes from World of Warcraft and you asked yourself "do they even play the damn game?". How many times did Zehn give a whole page of suggestions and it was all superior to the real deal? How many times did the developers do the exact opposite of what was needed? The whole coordination of the developing process needs a rework.

And to the piracy thing:
World of Warcraft top 100 - Private servers, Guides, Guilds, free servers
World of Warcraft - Top 100 Private Servers, Gold, Bots, Cheats


I play on a server where you hit 70 after the first mob and it does'nt diminish my fun the least. I hate grinding up with retards. Also i can jump on pickup raids for purples and terrorize alliance all day(theres real guilds but i dont want to waste time). 0 queues, 50ms lag ( i usually have 120-250 on live servers laff) almost instant "customer service" (way superior to the live zombies you get to deal with).

done ranting, IBTR and FU devs. No money from me until i get more then an empty box with a label.

[kasey]

This is what i say for a year now. The whole industry is total garbage. There is no innovation, there is no quality there is only one big beta we pay for and developers who are totally out of touch with the way the players actually play the game. See AgeofConan as newest member of the family of dumb mmos who have way too few real content. Thank you for beta testing, i might drop by in 2-3 years when it has more then 1 month worth of my time.

How many times did you read patch notes from World of Warcraft and you asked yourself "do they even play the damn game?". How many times did Zehn give a whole page of suggestions and it was all superior to the real deal? How many times did the developers do the exact opposite of what was needed? The whole coordination of the developing process needs a rework.

And to the piracy thing:
World of Warcraft top 100 - Private servers, Guides, Guilds, free servers
World of Warcraft - Top 100 Private Servers, Gold, Bots, Cheats

less lag 0 queues mostly instant customer support(laff) and its free, i play on an instant 70 server

done ranting, IBTR and FU devs. No money from me until i get more then an empty box with a label.

[Mist]

Originally Posted by Composter

I'm not sure I agree with that. There are things about consoles that mainstream people "get" that they don't "get" about PCs. Console gaming has become mainstream, and PC gaming (as much as you would like to think it has) is not.

Therefore, if you want a truly "mainstream" MMO, you'll want to make it console. Previously, the big difference between console and PC mmo-ing, and the reason the whole MMO thing did pan out very well on console (hi2u phantasy star), is the keyboard. For a social experience, you need to be able to communicate easily and effectively. With VOIP, there is a chance that consoles could work in MMOs (except then you have VOIP with the halo kiddies in an MMO). Add in voice-activated commands (emotes or / console-commands) when pushing a controller button, and there IS a potential for a mainstream console MMO.

I do agree with 1 thing of the original posting, though, and that is that it would nice to see some people attempt to break the mold a little in MMO-land.

WoW isn't mainstream enough? You can't make a product that pleases every kind of gamer and keeps them pleased for half a decade. I don't see how you could ever expect to have numbers all that much higher than WoW. ~9 million people have bought Halo 3. 80% of them probably played through the single player game in under 2 weeks, and then rarely played it ever again except a few split screen multiplayer games with their frat buddies a couple times a month. Less than a quarter of current generation consoles are even hooked up to the internet.

Compare this to WoW. 10 million+ active paying customers. Nearly all of them play it at least a couple nights a week for months. Some of them play it a lot more, and for almost 4 years now. WoW is the most profitable video game EVER made, especially once you consider all the licensed products. It is the Star Wars of MMOs. It is quite arguably the most mainstream video game EVER made if you want to go by total 'mindshare' or attention devoted to it, total man-hours spent playing it, etc. It proves the viability of the PC as a major platform all by itself. The only thing keeping PCs from being even bigger is that no one has made a game like WoW that applies to a different audience as WoW does. No one has made a CoD(-alike) MMO or Madden(-alike) MMO or a GTA(-alike) MMO, yet. Those games WILL get made, eventually. They WILL get WoW-like numbers, and probably without drawing too many subscribers away from WoW. These games might be developed for consoles, but more than likely they will be developed for PCs, because there just aren't enough consoles out there connected to the internet.

What remains however is that the MMO companies are trying to go directly head to head and steal WoW's customers rather than make MMOs suited to entirely different tastes.

[Frax]

Fuck that guy, he was one of the people who managed to turn one of the largest flops in MMO history into an even worse flop.

[Digo]

People toss around innovation like it's something you just pull out of your ass. What all these people clamoring for "innovative" gameplay fail to realize is that the MMO genre is constructed under some very stringent technical limitations, the most prevalent being thousands of current users and bandwidth limitations. Smart NPCs? Processor speeds. (Not to mention, smart NPCs = death for newbies and casual players.)

Conan incorporates things like model collision by instancing all of its world zones and then sub-instancing them once they hit zone capacity. A seamless world isn't possible with full model collision, at least, not yet. (Again, limited by available technology.)

[mutantmagnet]

Originally Posted by Mist

WoW isn't mainstream enough? You can't make a product that pleases every kind of gamer and keeps them pleased for half a decade. I don't see how you could ever expect to have numbers all that much higher than WoW. .

New technology or new ways to make old technology attractive to use (Wiimote) could come about that makes MMO games more appealing. Developers could follow through on design philosophies that make MMOs even more appealing. (e.g. mmo games are designed with time sinks in mind. How about removing those timesinks like skilling up or levelling up?)

[Digo]

Originally Posted by mutantmagnet

New technology or new ways to make old technology attractive to use (Wiimote) could come about that makes MMO games more appealing. Developers could follow through on design philosophies that make MMOs even more appealing. (e.g. mmo games are designed with time sinks in mind. How about removing those timesinks like skilling up or levelling up?)

Skilling up/leveling up is content for casual players. Dumping everyone right into competitive play is a recipe for failure with a subscription-based model because only the hardcore will buy subscriptions. I will be very, very surprised if APB has a million subs unless a sub is like $5, or they use the Guild Wars model (which has proven to be very successful.)