MMORPGs Matrix and Star Wars

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday May 23, 2002 @04:43AM from the can-i-play-as-trinity? dept.

Jedi2099 writes "Warner Bros., Monolith Productions and EON Entertainment are combining forces to create a new massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) based on The Matrix using Monolith's new LithTech Discovery System. " Personally I'm much more interested in the fact that the Star Wars Galaxy Beta that has started taking beta apps.

12 of 225 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Can there be a market for all these MMOGs? by Fenresulven · 2002-05-23 04:48 · Score: 3, Insightful

Somehow I have a feeling that a lot of them will crash and burn due to an insufficent market.
1. Re:Can there be a market for all these MMOGs? by sdhankin · 2002-05-23 05:21 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  > There can, there will. In time, subscription-based gaming will be the only thing in the market (why would I want to publish a game that can only make money once?)
  
  Because there is a significant section of the market for whom on-line games hold little appeal. You won't get their money, and currently, they are the vast majority. Why would you turn down their money?
2. Re:Can there be a market for all these MMOGs? by levik · 2002-05-23 05:42 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  I'm sure that's what'll happen, but the appeal is just too great... Think about it, instead of getting your game on the shelves for a couple of months, you ensure a cash stream for a couple of years at least. That's every single subscriber you've got not only shelling out $40 - $60 for the game in the store (of which you only get a percentage), but also paying $10 - $15 to you *directly* every month.
  That's like getting somebody to buy a new game from you every four months, but with only a fraction of the money spent on development, distribution and marketing of what you would with a traditional game model.
  I'm sure that all these companies are fully prepared for the risk of a failure due to market saturation, but if you weigh the benefits against the dangers, I think you end up coming out with a pretty profitable proposition, as long as your product is decent.
  Besides, if all these games in the market drive up the overall quality of the genre, everybody wins. With so many companies fighting over the players, I'm hoping to see the end of the "we can always fix in in a patch" mentality that dominated the early days of MMORPGs.
  
  --
  Ñ'
This isn't news... by FortKnox · 2002-05-23 04:49 · Score: 2, Insightful

Every great movie gets a game. 95% of those games are GIANT FLOPS.

I'll try it once the reviews come out.

--
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Not sure if this could compete by Wrexs0ul · 2002-05-23 04:53 · Score: 2, Insightful

I always wonder if these licensed games tend to hurt the worlds they're designed to cover. I enjoyed the matrix and idea of Neo as "the one" because of the limitless freedom and ability he'd found by simply freeing himself of doubt.

Then again you have to wonder if in the movie what we didn't see was the user's HUD or in-game chat: "Trinity, I'm down to 12% health, find me a med-pak!", or better yet: "he's using a wall hack!"

---

Got Web Hosting? RackNine

--
--- Need web hosting?
Ironic? by Copperhead · 2002-05-23 04:55 · Score: 5, Insightful

Does anyone else find this a bit ironic? Isn't the movie about a small group of people trying to unplug humanity from a virtual world? So, now Warner Bros. is creating a virtual world for fans of the movie to plug themselves into.
Weird.

--
Your reality is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. - Baron Munchausen
Why I quit MMORPGs by IIRCAFAIKIANAL · 2002-05-23 05:08 · Score: 3, Insightful
Three reasons:
- You can't win. There are no real goals.
- You can't pause. My GF hated when I used to play DAoC and she'd come into the den to say hi and I would tell her to wait until I could log out.
- They require an obscene amount of time investment.
Yup, that's why I keep my addiction to games I can win in a month or so and pause.

Small scale multiplayer RPGs are fun, but MMORPGS just seem to eat time. Even when I played a lot of Quake 2, I could drop out any time and not feel guilty about letting my character lvl fall behind my friends' levels.
--
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
how it all starts by xeno · 2002-05-23 05:23 · Score: 2, Insightful

I just had a perverse thought: What if this is how the Matrix starts? I mean, what better way to train a responsive and comprehensive environmental control system to become intelligent than to insert the activity of thousands of sentient entities into that environment? The words "self-fulfilling prophecy" come to mind.

Well, the words "improbable," "obtuse," and "gotta get out more" come to mind as well, but it's a curious thought.

-Jon

--
I think not...(*poof*)
Same flaw SWG has..... by TheLostOne · 2002-05-23 05:50 · Score: 5, Insightful

Well.. personally I have played my share of EQ in my day. In case you haven't it's pretty clearly a ripoff of D&D straight across (which is all Tolken anyway.. but eh.. ). So maybe all the races have been seen before, maybe no new concepts. But it IS a new world.. it is their world (you're in our world now is their slogan).. this allows them to write history, future, plot lines..

It allows you to be the main character in your own little world.. silly perhaps.. but

If you put it all in a preexisting storyline, with a preexisting world with already established heros, already planned and acted major events...well what the hell is the point anymore?

Why bother with a Matrix mmorpg? Afterall you aren't the one... the one will fix everything... you are just a spudly.. you don't matter. No matter what you do, live or die, quest or destory evil bad guys... you have no effect.

At least with EQ (which is quite a ripoff at times) they could make their own races... if they ripped off a race they could give it a new history.. they could make their own evil badguys.. name their own dragons.

Can they REALLY do that in SWG and Matrix? The world is already defined.. races and classes already exist, already have a history.

In other words.. EQ while being a ripoff allowed room for creativity, for discovery. SWG and Matrix are just yet another marketing device.. 'ooh ooh lets make a cool racing game.. then put it on Tatooine and call it SW Epi1 Pod Racer!!'

It is one thing being yet another adventurer in a world with no pre defined heros or plotlines... but why pay the money just to play a cameo in a movie?

--

'..that kernel panicked like a nun in a crack house!'
Re:Distributed MMORPG by isoteareth · 2002-05-23 06:12 · Score: 2, Insightful

Hacking, cracking and general bug exploiting are already nightmarish in these games. I don't think offloading server functions to client machines would be a good idea...
Re:Distributed MMORPG by Big_Breaker · 2002-05-23 06:43 · Score: 2, Insightful

The problem with that is security. You simply can't trust the client or anything on the client's machine.

One way to get around this is periodic auditing and having clients with low-ping to one another hosting each other's game and AI. Still its risky and the overhead to the protocol can outway the advantages.
Re:Distributed MMORPG by Kingfox · 2002-05-23 11:35 · Score: 3, Insightful

Seriously, the other less-polite reply to your comment is right. It's one thing to just go around canning suspicious users on web games or M*s... it's quite a different story when the enduser is a paying customer.