FF XI Goes Live in Japan

Castolari writes "Gameforms reports about the Japanese launch of FF XI, Square's online venture with the series. Apparently, there's some serious technical problems with the server load as well." They also have some Screenshots. I'm still hoping that someone will get the MMORPG right in the not so distant future.

Comments

"Right" means different things to different people

[JaredOfEuropa]

Some people do not like to go after anyone they don't like. Some people even don't like to fight monsters.

Which is fine! A problem that has often been mentioned in relation to MMORPGs is that everyone wants to be a king, a mighty warrior or a mage, and no one wants to play a peasant, underdog or craftsman. Existing MMORPGS have shown that that is not true: plenty of people do not mind roleplaying such a role. The truly succesful MMORPG will either cater to a sufficiently large group of one particular kind of player, or combine a multitude of play-styles, both within the game-world, and by having different worlds for different people (like the normal and the roleplay servers of Dark age of Camelot). I would prefer the second, since it will result in diversity, and create an opportunity to try different playstyles.

That is the hard part, try and make all of the following play styles and roles viable:
- people who like to play solo
- people who like to team up
- Hardcore / casual PvP'ers
- Both casual and full-time players. A big, big problem with many of these games is that low-level characters cannot join up with the more experienced warriors and go hunting together
- Craftsmen, peasants, merchants, diplomats, etc.
- People playing for fame, for gold, for fun or for company.
Also take in mind that people will switch from one role to the other often.

Next is your environment. You need stable servers and good staff, to help out players in trouble, catch grief players and cheaters, and perhaps provide content as well.

Lastly, players need to have an impact on the environment. This can take many forms, but the idea that your actions matter in the game is a big draw for many people.

Most of todays MMORPSs seem to focus on fighting and/or PvP, and have no viable crafter classes. The ever so popular 1st person view makes having conversations with more than 2 people rather hard Compare looking at a tiny chat window that shows all text around you, to the overhead view of Ultima Online, where speech text appears over the heads of the people speaking. Whatever faults that game may have, they got that part right. Lack of meaningful, non-aggressive interaction and having only combat characters as a viable class makes all the current MMORPGs a rather bland experience. Excepting Ultima Online: I have tried all the others, but I have never given up on that one. It is still the game with by far the widest possible range of play styles.

Butterfly Grid

[DeadBugs]

IBM and Butterfly.net are working to create a new network for Massive Mutliplayer Online Gaming. They are hoping to license the technology to companies such as Sony.
Here are some of the highlights:

Unlimited numbers of players within one persistent-state world

Advance, Distributed Artificial Intelligence

Every game genre

Multiple, concurrent games

Any connected device

Hot-swappable components

Shared-source developer sandbox