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MMORPGs, Are You There Yet?
maddugan writes "CNN recently posted a story about a company by the name There and their opening of a public beta for their 'Virtual Universe'. One of the key element is that you can buy virtual Levis and Nikes for your Avatar. " Hemos & I have been playing The Sims Online- Come visit the Slashdot Charisma Sweatshop on the absolute west edge of the Mt Fuji City and say hi. I got my real nick for once too! I love MMORPGs and 'There' looks like another wrinkle on taking Sims type games online. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out.
I was a compuserve member way back when the internet was hard to get onto (you couldn't access the net from compuserve when I first signed up). They looked deep into my soul and gave me a number based upon the order in which I joined. About when they let me choose a screen name for myself (all_the_good_names_are_taken@compuserve.com I kid you not.) they introduced this thing called Worlds Away which seems eerily like "there."
The keyword you typed at the go prompt was AWAY, so youd type GO: AWAY and be transported to a virtual world which had all the usuall compuserve anal retentive rules to keep everyone playing nice.
I've since left compuserve due to the cost of access and the mountains of rules, but I did hear that worlds away has been replaced by a thing called Dreamscape.
Everything that is old is new again.
I beta-tested TSO. Took me about one hour to decide that it was fundamentally flawed. I'm glad they held the open beta because it convinced me that this was NOT a game I would enjoy.
I think it's great when MMOG game developers offer open public beta-tests. It puts lots of eyeballs on their game (better chance that bugs will be found) and as the release of EQ taught us, it's never a bad idea to load-test your servers in beta. Also, if their game is good on a fundamental level (even if a few bugs still have to be found)...word of mouth will do all the pre-selling they'll need.
Hopefully, There will get it right.
--K.
Sig: Bad people happen. Try to avoid being one of them.
Is anyone developing a free to use mmorpg, maybe based on a p2p method? I pay enough monthly bills I don't want to pay a monthly fee just to play a game. I don't mind paying for the game though.
I wonder if there's a way to build a mmorpg system that doesn't require central servers, but could exist on thousands of p2p machines. As pc's log on and off, the load is moved around. Sort of a combination of p2p and a distributed.net.
Instead of servers slowing down with more people logging on, the game gets faster when more pc's log in and add their computing power.
My big thing is with how much time commitment a "Virtual World" type game requires. I have never played any type of online static VW game, just things like Battle.net.
My main reason for this is that it seems like the commitment is too great. It seems like one I play I have to keep playing everyday or else my previous effort isn't really useful, like I have to live a second life almost to make anything useful/fun out of the MMOG.
I am currently playing Animal Crossing on the GCN, and while this game is ultimately experienced best if you play a little each day or for an hour or two on the weekends, Or both in my casse, I could stop playing for a while and nothing would go wrong or bad, I would be able to pick right back up. The same goes for the non MMOG Sims. From outside of MMOG it seems like I couldn't do this with those.
Am I off base with my impressions of MMOG? Are there any that exhibit play whenever you want/can better than others without degrading the experience?
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson