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For MMOs, I think this is forgivable. After all, they're supposed to be persistent worlds. That said, a competent MMO developer will set up storylines for players to work through (either at their own pace, or a pace forced by in-game world events). The two MMOs I've played both do this; WoW and Final Fantasy XI. I understand that the real masters in this field are Codemasters, with Lord of the Rings Online, but a variety of other factors have always kept me away from that game. Interestingly, I understand that Blizzard will actually be adding a proper ending cutscene in the next WoW patch, for guilds that manage to take down Arthas. Given this will be the culmination of a major plot arc that kicked off years ago in Warcraft 3, I heartily approve.

I agree with all your major points but there is something that my inner pedant can't leave alone. I play Lord of the Rings Online (and have since part of the closed Beta) and the story lines are indeed masterful. However, Codemasters has nothing to do with the development of the game, they are just the European distributor. Turbine is the game's developer and so they are responsible for all aspects of the game.

You may want to try Never Winter Nights by BioWare for single-purchase game (no recurring fees) or Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach by Turbine for a monthly-fee for the MMO services.

...cutting-edge graphics abound...

Asheron's Call has a free 14 day trial going on:
http://trial.ac.turbine.com/

To be fair to Sony...

Everquest 2
World of Warcraft
Everquest 2
Lineage 2
Everquest 2
A Tale in the Desert
Another Lineage 2, just because I like the art style.
Everquest 2
Asheron's Call 2
Everquest 2
Everquest 2
Final Fantasy XI Online
Everquest 2
Ragnarok Online

These are hand-picked images from a quick google images search. Hopefully that balances both ways. I'll let you all be the judge of the aesthetic quality of EQ2.

You'll also note that the imagery has gotten much more stylized as the series has progressed into the desert of flames expansion. I suspect this has been a touchy subject within Sony, which is why they had the strong reaction they did to the criticism.

Conquer Onlinehttp://www.conqueronline.com/ does this via an in game Training Grounds area that your character will automatically gain skills and experience at. It doesn't work while you are offline, but it's a pretty small client and easy to keep minimized. Lord of the Rings Onlinehttp://lotro.turbine.com/ is also tentatively planning on a passive leveling system. The idea is that some skills would level over time, while some would require direct intervention. Whether this will make release or not is difficult to say, as there has been a significant amount of redesigning so far.

AC is ancient and should be used as an example of how succesful Turbine could be at creating an MMO. They just released another expansion for the game, and it is still going strong. AC2 on the other hand was a flop and they just shut the AC2 game worlds off completely. While AC2 had the pretty graphics, and better engine they really broke gameplay.

Combine the experience gained from thier success, and thier failure, and you have a good shot at making a game (or two) that will be the better for it. The Turbine devs have stated over and over again they are trying very hard to stick to DnD rules and convert them to the MMO scope in the best way possible while still makeing the game real time, interactive, and most importantly fun.

Turbine must be doing something right, they've landed the rights to build not only the DnD MMO, but the Middle Earth MMO as well.

While I agree AC became painful to play without Decal (I stopped playing before WoW came out anyway), the game has had enough appeal to last this long, and that is a damn good sign for Turbines future.

http://lotro.turbine.com/
http://www.ddo.com/

AC IS still going strong. It actually has one very cool feature that most MMPOGs don't have - true pathing for arrows, spells, etc. You can step out of the way of an arrow or spell, and it misses you.

It's AC2 that's being shut down.

I played AC (my first MMPOG) for a year or two - it was fun. I remember when they did their big Christmas update, the first year, and there were snowmen, and snow, etc. Was really cool.

I played AC2 during the beta, and it was dead and empty. Looks like it's leaving the same way it began.

I like the idea of releasing the engine, etc, but Turbine might be making other games.

"5. Protection of Confidential Information. During the course of the Preview Program, you will have access to non-public information concerning the Game, including, but not limited to, the game design, look and feel, computer software, game concepts, storylines, features, screen shots, characters, graphics, audio, visual images, any information, discussions or postings of Turbine or other participants in Preview, any and all Feedback, business methods or other technical or business information which is not generally known and which is proprietary to Turbine and/or its publishing partners or licensors (and their affiliates) ("Confidential Information"). All of the foregoing is confidential and proprietary to Turbine or Atari (or their respective affiliates, publishing partners, licensors or licensees). You agree to treat as confidential all Confidential Information (including your password) of which you become or are made aware in connection with your participation in Preview, regardless of whether it is specifically designated as confidential and regardless of whether it is in written, oral, electronic, or other form. The Confidential Information may include, without limitation, trade secrets, know-how, inventions, game interfaces, technical data or specifications, testing methods, business or financial information, research and development activities, product and marketing plans, and customer and supplier information. You agree that you shall maintain all Confidential Information in strict confidence; you will not disclose or permit access to Confidential Information to anyone other than Turbine employees or contractors (or those of its affiliates, publishing partners, licensors and/or licensees), or discuss Confidential Information with anyone except within the Game itself or on the Preview boards accessible by logging in with a username and password on http://beta.turbine.com/ and will use all Confidential Information only for the purposes of your participation in Preview or playing the Game after commercial release. Your obligations and Turbine's rights under this Paragraph 5 will continue and survive any termination of this Agreement.

6. Ownership. You agree that all right, title, and interest in and to the Feedback, and any inventions relating to an improvement of or other change or addition to the Game conceived or made as a result of your Preview participation, shall be owned solely and exclusively by Turbine and may be used, disclosed, copied, modified or distributed by Turbine for any purpose. To the extent that any portion of your Feedback is protectable by copyright, patent, trade secret, trademark or other intellectual property rights, you hereby assign all right, title and interest in and to the Feedback and such related rights to Turbine. All right, title, and interest in and to the Game remains the property of Turbine and/or Atari (or their licensors), and is protected by copyright, patent, trade secret, trademark and/or other intellectual property laws.

7. No Alterations/Return of Material. You shall not alter or remove any proprietary legend or notice from any Confidential Information, the Game, or any other material supplied to you by Turbine, or attempt to copy, modify, transfer, decompile or reverse engineer any Confidential Information, the Game, or other such material. Upon Turbine's request during the term of this Agreement, and upon termination of this Agreement, you agree to turn over to Turbine all copies of the Feedback and all copies of documents or other media in any form, written or electronic, which contain Confidential Information, whether created by you or furnished to y

Go download the stresstest and be as disappointed in DDO as I am.

This game is still being developed http://lotro.turbine.com/ I'm not sure when they changed the name but it was recent. It probably won't do so well because the lotr craze seems over and only really big fans will notice it.

Maybe my post wasn't too clear. Sorry for that. I also should have posted a source. The name of the company created by SOE is Station Publishing. Let me quote the home page for you:

" Station Publishing(TM) offers developers and publishers the opportunity to capitalize on Sony Online Entertainment's experienced and robust marketing, PR, sales and distribution services. Station Publishing meets the needs of a growing number of companies who may not have the capability or inclination to undertake this 'last mile' themselves. The scope of services offered under Station Publishing are matched to the needs of the distribution arrangement.

Our first titles to be released under Station Publishing will be Turbine Entertainment Software's Asheron's Call: Throne of Destiny and Asheron's Call 2: Legions. We are reviewing a number of other titles, and are open to discussions with developers and publishers for games on most platforms. For interested parties, please email us."

Also, your statement about Lord of the Rings Online oughting the rights to VUG is wrong. In late march, they bought back the exclusive rights from VUG (press release). That leaves them free to use Station Publishing, doesn't it ?

And as for Dungeons and Dragons online, I guess that's the exception. But there's a logic to it. Atari has got a deal with Wizards of the Coast to publish most (if not all) of the games using their licenses (see Neverwinter Nights - Forgotten Realms -, for instnce).

So my post wasn't spreading rumors, I think. I was asking valid questions, making hypostesis, and I never said I was 100% sure or that I had "inside sources".

Kthx.

The "Cactus Data Shield" brand has been around for a while, but this appears to be an updated version.

The original implementation tweaked out the table of contents on discs, making it appear that the disc was only 30 seconds long (28 after you subtract the mandatory two-second pregap). This allowed most CD players to play the disc, because they ignored the lead-out value, but CD-ROM drives got confused. Unfortunately for BMG, some Philips CD players did pay attention to the value and refused to play the CDs. The scheme was abandoned.

This updated scheme uses an entirely different approach, one that could be worse than the Macrovision stuff. If it works as well as they claim, it would have to produce distortion on all digital outputs -- otherwise their claims of defeating audio CD copiers wouldn't hold.

I'd love to get my hands on one of these. I tried to get some of the German discs with the old Cactus protection, but the import I got from Amazon was, of all things, a copy on CD-R media.

One thing to note: the article did not say that damaging CDs were released (shame on slashdot for going for hype instead of fact). It said that they *could* be released. Highly unlikely they ever would.

As far as Ministry CDs not playing, they probably did something bizarre to be cute and inadvertently caused problems. Artists will occasionally do strange things with CDs, e.g. Nine Inch Nails putting 99 tracks on their "Broken" CD, most of which are only one second long. (Red Book says mininum track length is 4 seconds.)

For a list of "odd" CDs, see http://www.turbine.com/oddcd/.

For details about the current audio CD copy protection stuff, see http://www.cdrfaq.org/, sections 2-4-2, 2-4-3 2-4-4