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Champions Online is releasing for 360 and PS3, also from Cryptic. I think their limiting factor until now was not so much RAM as it was Microsoft's prohibition on requiring Hard Drives for games to play.

NCSoft is also rumored to be working on an MMO for the PS3 at their Northern California location.

True, but the content was significantly different. Maybe not quite as much as various games using the Half Life engine or somesuch, but close enough.

However, they're officially merging the two games into one soon, according to this announcement: http://www.cityofheroes.com/press/a_new_age.html. Then there's the expansions and sequels referred to in this announcement: http://www.plaync.com/us/news/2007/11/ncsoft_announce_23.html

Both were written by Cryptic and published by NCSoft, and IP was owned 50/50 by each on both games. Now it's 100% NCSoft owned, and a lot of the Cryptic folks who worked on them moved over to NCSoft. This is a massive win for the franchise, IMO, as it means there's no more conflict of interest with Cryptic working with Marvel on their MMO (even if they said there wasn't any conflict).

I know it's in it's own catagory but...

I like playing City of Heroes.

And it includes Gunfire, Melee, Bows and all sorts of other combat.

There are ways to make the combat systems work. Sci-Fi MMORPG's haven't succeded due to crappy development and ugly player experience. If someone made a unique concept sci-fi game and created a nice player experience... then the players would arrive. In addition it seems to take a certain critical mass of players for a MMORG to self sustain it's customer base. Until a MMORPG does, it requires a large amount of advertising to reach out to potential players.

Actually as I look at the NCsoft site, they have three recent SciFi games that look good.
http://www.plaync.com/us/games/
Only time will tell if any of them take of as much as some of thier other titles.

I think we should all contact NC Soft and tell them how we feel about paying for ads in our games!

NC Soft's recent press release regarding Auto Assault mentions subscription pricing to be determined.

Here's how to contact NC Soft in North America:
prna@plaync.com

Email away!

(d) Member Conduct. You agree not to use the Service to: (i) upload, post, e-mail or otherwise transmit Content that infringes any third party rights; (ii) impersonate any person or entity, including, but not limited to, an NC Interactive or its affiliates' employee, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity; (iii) upload, post, e-mail or otherwise transmit Content that violates any law or regulation; (iv) upload, post, e-mail or otherwise transmit Content as determined by NC Interactive at its sole discretion that is harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortuous, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable; or contains any viruses, trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancelbots or other computer programming routines that are intended to damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or personal information; (v) upload, post, email or otherwise transmit any Content that you do not have a right to transmit under any law or under contractual or fiduciary relationships (such as inside information, proprietary and confidential information learned or disclosed as part of employment relationships or under nondisclosure agreements); (vi) upload, post, email or otherwise transmit any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, "junk mail," "spam," "chain letters," "pyramid schemes," or any other form of solicitation; (vii) interfere with or disrupt the Service or servers or networks connected to the Service, or disobey any requirements, procedures, policies or regulations of networks connected to the Service; or (viii) "stalk" or otherwise harass another member.

Complet text http://www.plaync.com/help/eula_lineage2.html

Well, that's why Marvel sued NCSOFT.

I can't say I'm distressed over the Judge's decision to dismiss the case. Sorry Marvel, it seems you'll just have to deal with some competition.

Themis [..] is involved with a failing or failed business [..] Jumpgate

I don't know about the others, but Jumpgate - a four year old game - is still very much alive and you can play it right now if you want to. They still have a hardcore group of regular players - and the game is still actively maintained with occasional new content and bug fixes. This is not my definition of a failure.

The company isn't failing either - the creators of Jumpgate, NetDevil, are now working with NC Soft on Auto Assault, a MMO car combat game.

A massively multilayer Grand Theft Auto would be a game that would claim may a soul. It will happen eventually but not for a long time I think.

nothing like GTA, but an mmorpg with cars... auto assault

Part of providing such a safe environment means we must ensure that all character names are created in a clean and positive light to meet the Teen Rating of the game while also following all copyright and trademark standards. In order to meet those ends, we have created a name filter to ensure that character names are acceptable for play within City of Heroes. This name filter is in place at character creation, meaning that each time a character is created and a name chosen, it must pass through this filter. Names that are included on this filter include certain copyrighted and trademarked characters, and also a slew of different categories (see below list) reflect derogatory names, foul language, ethnic slurs, inappropriate conduct, and referenced to body parts.

From the City of Heroes' End User Licence Agreement (paragraph 6c):

Members can upload to and create content on our servers in various forms [...] you acknowledge and agree that such Member Content is the sole property of NC Interactive.

So by uploading a Wolverine-like character, NC Interactive claims ownership of the Wolverine-like character, so NC Interactive is in trouble for owning and using a trademarked character in their game.
However...

You shall indemnify and hold NC Interactive harmless from and against any claims by third parties that your Member Content infringes upon, violates or misappropriates any of their intellectual property or proprietary rights.

So basically it's the user who's in trouble. I wonder how many of those users will get sued by NC Interactive in order to indemnify them.

SOE currently offers their All Access Pass :

"If you play more than one SOE game, or you want to try the other great SOE games available, SOE All Access opens the SOE game catalog to you.

SOE All Access grants access to all current games published by SOE*, which includes: EverQuest® EverQuest® Macintosh Edition PlanetSide EverQuest® Online Adventures Station Pass access, which includes the popular games Infantry Online, Cosmic Rift and Tanarus

Full access to these games for the low monthly subscription price of $21.99 is a potential savings of more than $18.00 every month over the total cost of the individual subscriptions!"


PlayNC (NCSoft) does not offer such a deal but is a central site for managing your online game subscriptions and I imagine once Guild Wars, Tabula Rasa, Auto Assault and others are released, we may start to see some special offers from them as well.


Skotos has been offering this type of service for a long time. For one monthly fee you can access and play all 11 of the games that they offer. Only 2 are graphical MMOGs (Meridian 59 and Underlight), but the other games are very good as well.


The largest factor in offering multiple "A list" titles for one monthly fee is offsetting development (and in the case of MMOGs, maintenance) costs and bringing in enough revenue to show a good profit. The bottom line is always a driving factor in any business. However, there is hope. As technology moves forward, we will start to see more and more rapid development of MMOGs of higher quality and consequently we should start to see a wider array of offerings and price points.


I also agree that some sports games should start to appear on the scene. XBox Live will probably be a driving factor to this more than anything. Playing football online against other players is quite fun and should prove to be very popular considering the amount of sports console games sold. Now, as to whether that genre will move to PC is yet to be seen, but as I mentioned before, in SOE's All Access Pass, they combine online console and PC subscriptions into one package. A diverse product line benefits them in this case. More comapnies need to grow in the genre and diversify at the same time, but that takes time and money. Soon though... very soon.