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Just dont come in with a Logitech G15 or a server of your own making - then moddability goes out the window. They'd have to outright undo the bnetd decision before I ever come back. Until then, I'll happily slay farmers indiscriminately in any manner I see fit. No need to circumvent faction problems, just pure "you make the fun in the game" pvp.

After all, WoW only comes out on top after the top two games are taken out of statistics.

If there's been a known bug in L2, it's been fixed. Here, the only issue is not being able to drop sellshops in town. Nothing better than having a farmer crew being taken out by a few mobs in town and dropping their ill-gotten treasure for westerners to grab.

Eventually, someone will make a WoW-killer in the MMORPG arena. It may take a few years, but it'll happen.

WoW Killer? Do you not know about the exclusion of existing games in some statistics? Or do you need a recent chart?

Every MMO has CD keys that are forever associated with a given account.

Not true. Those that don't bother with selling you an initial product certainly don't. There are a number of smaller MMO's (like Puzzle Pirates) for which this is true. However, this isn't a "it's just the small and irrelevant MMOs" case, it's also true for the world's largest MMO.

How do you expect them to actually release a CD key? The way these games work is you can come back to it later and renew your account if you wish. How can they renew their account if the key has been released for reuse?

If you sell your CD copy (and associated key) you lose the ability to renew your account later. That's life. If you want to keep your account for later you shouldn't sell your copy. Their EULA suggests that the game can be resold; if someone cannot reasonably do that then they have a problem. If Blizzard isn't going to keep their side of the deal, why should the player keep his?

Frankly, this entire mess is the result of the stupid "You must buy a copy to play" logic. Lineage managed to become the world's larged MMO without that policy. Assuming the developers want to continue charging a set up fee (Which is what buying the box amounts to), just be honest about it. If someone gets a copy without paying for it at retail, charge a one-time setup fee (at a discount, since you didn't have to pay to duplicate the disc, box it up, or get it onto store shelves). Then be sure to label your boxed products "Covers one time setup fee, fee cannot be transferred or sold."

1 month - $15 USD
4 months - $45 USD ($11.25 per month)

I think some of the games, such as Lineage, offer the game as a free download... you just need to give them credit card information to play. They don't really charge you for the game itself though.

I quit almost 2 years ago...now I find myself oddly back....Lineage: The Bloodpledge

Um... but none of the "giant conglomerate-made games" are available in Russian? Some of these "giants" wouldn't even know where to begin translating, selling and marketing to a completely new market like Russia. Their time and effort is better spent on keeping their existing user base happy.

An English language MMORPG is going to sell as well in Russia as a Russian MMORPG will in America - you'd have about six customers, one of whom would never play it, one would be Russian language students, two would be Russians who were now living in the US, and the remaining two would constantly complain about not being able to read Russian.

Okay, so you've played a Korean-made MMORPG, but the average American gamer on the street probably hasn't. Heck, 99% of American MMORPG gamers haven't even *heard* of the most popular MMORPG in the world - Lineage (which has over 2 million active players).

I've never even heard of this game.

Because it was never marketed in the West and as such stayed mostly an Eastern phenomenon (South Korean, specifically, and you know how crazy Koreans get about gaming). It is now open for business for English-speaking markets, though.

Some small bits of background why the western release is a bit interesting: Lineage's maker, NCSoft of South Korea, has US headquarters in Austin, Texas. Formerly, for a brief time, it was called Destination Games, and was run by Richard and Robert Garriott and Starr Long - who previously did this little unconsequential game called Ultima Online.

Lineage's web page his here. Seems fairly interesting.

Lineage boasts players in the millions, mostly in S. Korea. I think that qualifies them as the largest MMOG.

Counterstrike regularly boasts more than 100,000 players at peak times. Live stats can be found here.

It would also be interesting to see simultaneous online numbers from these games: Sony's Everquest having more than half a million players; Lineage has over two million players in South Korea.

However, good for Microsoft. Xbox Live has some really good games on it at the moment, most notably Crimson Skies.

It's odd that an article, discussing how MMORPGs haven't penetrated the mainstream, fails to mention the single most popular MMORPG ever, Lineage. Granted, it's not western mainstream, but a game with over 4 million active subscribers is no longer a fringe game. That's a subscriber base that clearly qualifies as a success. As mentioned in the previous link, in Korea the game commands 47% of the market share. I doubt (m)any books, movies, or TV shows can claim that.

What's really odd is that they even mention NC Soft and their billing methods for an upcoming game. But no mention of the game that has a subscriber base an order of magnitude larger than Everquest... guess that would go against the hypothesis and require an actual analysis of how and why the Korean market is different than the western/American market.

LINEAGE FEATURES

In the medieval world of Lineage(TM), choose to be a gallant knight, a resourceful wizard, a crafty elf, or a revered prince or princess. Play surrounded by guarded castles, perilous forests, sinister fens and valleys filled with the undead. Slay ferocious monsters unlike any known to man or elf.

"trying to compare it to other MMOGs is almost like comparing apples to oranges"

Yes, it definately sounds radically different from such boring mainstream products as Everquest.

One of the coolest moments of the many GenCon Game Fair's that I attended in Miwaukee, WI was when a panel consisting of most of the premiere Origin producers including Richard Garriot and Warren Spector took a question from the crowd during the Q&A session and when the nervous speaker said, "Well I have a programming question...and...um.. well I'm from a little company in town...do you know PKWare?"

And all the members of the panel looked at one another and then started doing the Wayne's World bow and chanting, "We're not worthy! We're not worthy!"

Then Warren (if I remember correctly) made a mildly sarcastic and admonishing comment towards the poor PKWare dude along the lines of, "Hey man you guys have saved us tons of money on media. We use Zip all the time. Of course we know your company." (games of the era were beginning to approach some 30 floppy discs compressed and CD-ROM had not yet become an affordable alternative)

It's nice when a little mostly unkown (at the time) company making software compression utilities gets recognition from a (at the time) powerhouse game development company like that.