Myst MMOG Details Announced

Ubi Soft and Cyan announced the title for their upcoming online game. Uru: Online Ages Beyond Myst , developed by Cyan Worlds, Inc., is slated for release late this year. From the press release, "Uru will take advantage of broadband to deliver a continually updated, immersive environment and storyline, with content that grows, changes and evolves constantly. It will also be the first persistent world to support real-time voice communication." Sounds like a different road than online games like The Sims Online and Star Wars Galaxies are taking, with the entertainment consisting in exploration and storyline rather than in player status and achievement.

Comments

MMOG?

[Dracos]

...with the entertainment consisting in exploration and storyline rather than in player status and achievement.

Sounds like the closest thing yet to an actual online RPG, and it's not even being called a MMORPG, which things like EverQrack certainly are not. The gameplay differences between so called "MMORPGs" and games like Doom, Quake, and Unreal are negligible at best. FPS + chargen doth not an RPG make.

Don't get me started on how Final Fanstasy devolved from a game into a non-interactive movie.

Re:seriously, do we need this?

[JaredOfEuropa]

I mean how many MMOGs do we really need to waste our silly little lives away?

Infinitely many! Seriously, the MMORPG market is beginning to diversify, with games available or being released soon, catering to different tastes and playstyles. If the trend continues, I see the following things happening:

1) MMORPG's become more mainstream. The Sims and Star Wars Galaxies may set off this trend and expand the market for MMORPG's.

2) Each individual MMORPG will have less subscribers than they have now, and it will become increasingly difficult to obtain customers. That means that they may have to cater for smaller niche markets rather than trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator. This is good news: people are more likely to find an MMORPG they like, rather than having a choice from 5 or so games, all trying to be everything to everyone.

3) With each individual MMORPG appealing to smaller groups, revenues will drop sharply. However I suspect that MMORPGs for small groups can be run profitably, especially if a company runs more than one of them and shares resources such as billing, customer care, server facilities and possibly the servers and game code as well. Remember: some of today's MMORPGs are obscenely profitable. For a while, EA has been faltering, and Ultima Online by itself was the only thing keeping the company afloat (EA even admitted as much in one of the quarterly reports). These things will be profitable for less people.