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Ultimate Baseball Online - Rise Of The MMOSG?
Cobol Junky writes "Ultimate Baseball Online, a game claiming to be the first MMOSG (massively multiplayer online sports game) has recently transitioned into free Beta status. Each player's character takes a position on the baseball field, and can improve their skills and stats by gaining experience, just like a regular MMORPG. UBO is being created by NetAmin, the creators of an scrapped MMORPG called Fallen Age." This title has been in development for a while, and a GameSpot preview reveals more, but what other genres will get tarred by the massively multiplayer brush before long?
Honestly, I hope they start charging monthly fees for this! I don't think enough games charge monthly fees! Maybe we can get people to charge monthly fees for offline games too!
Seriously, I don't see enough of a market to justify a full scale MMO game. People log on and play everquest like there's nothing better in the world, but I have a hard time beliving that the type of people willing to play sports games would be dedicated enough to play them in an MMO format (which inevitably means monthly fees)
It looks to me as if they're taking features that have been around in sports games for quite some time in single player mode and putting them online.
Still, the game doesn't look all too good, and I fail to see exactly what makes this massively multiplayer. From what I can tell, you're still constrained to the field area. You can't roam the land trying to wrangle up teammates to find the perfect ballpark to call your own. Hell, there's even a player lobby, just like normal multiplayer games. To me, calling this game an MMO title is nothing but marketing babble for a crappy sports game without any professional licenses.
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MMO is waaay overblown. Simple reason. There just aren't enough players. MMOGs take time to play. There just aren't enough people willing to devote a significant enough chunk of their life to a game. There are some, and they were enough to keep Ultima Online flush with players. There were even enough for Everquest as well. But there are now MMOGs coming out at an incredible clip, which keeps fragmenting the customers base further, and reducing the value of other competitors in the field. MMOGs are flopping left and right, and still publishers frantic for a pirate-resistant subscription model try to start new MMOGs.
May we never see th
This is great, MMORPGs bore me to tears! (Yes, I have tried plenty) Ive been waiting for something MMO-ish, but not in the usual Everquest/DAoC/Diablo 2 vein. This game sounds like it has lots of potential. Currently downloading, will know how good it is in about one hour or so :)
It's become fashionable to bash MMO's and just declare them the CB Radio of gaming, but this sounds fun and seems like a good idea. Controlling a whole team vs another guy controlling a whole team is an abstraction, this is truly a sports simulator, with team dynamics and personalities playing a huge role. Maybe the fat kids in school will get a little redemption.
Awesome! I can't wait to spend hours on end scouring the stadium, whacking rats with my +2 Baseball Bat of Slugging in order to level up my half-elf Second Baseman. ;)
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The first Massively- Multiplayer online sport game Hooligans.
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hmm, I like this idea. I've been a baseball fan for years, and remember playing some of the earliest sports games (on the intellivision, no less).
Having a group of 18 sounds like fun, and if anyone leaves, dummy bot takes his place until someone else comes online.
Gonna check it out once I get home.
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Guys, they're not going after the established MMO fanbase. They're going after the sports fans who want just a little more. Entirely different target demographics.
That said, I hope someone does this with football so I could play it. I call tight end... Blocking is fun!
This title has been in development for a while, and a GameSpot preview reveals more, but what other genres will get tarred by the massively multiplayer brush before long?
Please let it be Hockey! And soon! for GameCube? (ok I'm dreaming again... it's great being a fan of the #4 major sport and the #3 online console, I can tell you what...)
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Wow, this can now simulate how boring it is to play baseball. Maybe I'll get stuck in right field and the ball wont come in my direction the whole game. Sounds like fun, paying monthly fees to sit around like i'm playing baseball. Cmon people, if you love the game that much, go sign up for a league and play it for real? It's not like baseball is an unaccessable sport like football or hockey. Oh well, mmorpg on..
...Motor City Online? I predict that this will be jsut as successfull as Motor City Online. I think that, at least at this point, the relative failure of the Sims Online shows that MMO games jsut aren't for the mainstream yet.
Certainly the game makers need to keep trying and I'm glad they are. Eventually something will hit the wall and stick with teh general public. However, I just don't see this as being it.
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Isn't this the same thing?
From GameSpot dated April 23, 2003:
Square Enix begins open alpha testing of Online Striker
Square Enix's online soccer game is available for open testing in Japan.
Square Enix has released a downloadable alpha version of its upcoming PC soccer game Online Striker. While Online Striker has been in open testing under its developer, Dingo, since late last year, this is the first time that its publisher, Square Enix, is opening the test to the public.
Online Striker is an online soccer game in which each of the participants can control one of the 22 players involved in a match. The game plays from a first-person view, simulating a realistic soccer-field view for each player. The final version will have a coach on each team who will also be controlled by a player, and a visual lobby will be available as well. The final product will also include a single-player mode, a skill-learning mode, and the ability to edit characters.
with bandwidth shared like bit-torrent...?
How exactly is this considered a massively-multiplayer game? As far as I can tell, only 18 people (2 teams of 9) are ever in the same "world" at the same time. (Unless there are also bench players and bullpen pitchers, etc. Boy, wouldn't that be fun, to play left-handed relief pitcher #2, who only comes in every 3 or 4 games to get 1 batter out.) Is that really massively-multiplayer? Sure, you may build a character who persists over multiple games, and who has the potential to interact with thousands of different people, but by that standard, isn't Diablo II massively-multiplayer? Hell, anything on Battle.net could be considered an MMO by that logic. Most people would define an MMO as a game where (at least) hundreds of players are playing in a single world at one time. A loose collection of people gathering in some chatroom-like lobby waiting to get a team together to play a game hardly fits that description.
Great...so now we're gonna have people camping the pitchers mound, and people TKing to pitch? Can the batters charge the mound? If they could, I'm sure this game would attract a large amount of CS players.
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Here's the problem with MMOSG's...
For example, take any team game. It's an excellent idea - 20 people each in a specialized position, playing like a real match. The problem is that, unlike when you're standing on the field, people will NOT have the patience to play correctly. You'll have fullbacks (defense guys in soccer) trying to score goals because they're bored, shortstops trying to catch a left-field popup (and messing up the play later), EVERYONE trying to shoot in basketball (no one, i predict, will want to be all-defensive).
This may work, however, with interesting rules (like, for example, the goalie can't pull himself if he's bored since the puck is always on the other side... unless a majority of the team votes it).
While on the subject, a manager/coach might be one of the most interesting positions in a MMOSG. They would pick who's on the ice (call line switches), pick the pass that the quarterback has to follow (or at least narrow it down to 2-3 options or quartback sneak), etc.
So again, this could work work, could be amazing, but it's going to need some intelligent programming/rule-creating to make it fun.
I was hoping there would soon be an online system that linked up multiple sports titles together as if in a giant park or something like that. It would be cool... you enter at the lobby/staging area/front gate etc. Then you take various virtual forms of transportation to whatever sport you wanted to play.
You could walk past the minigolf course on your way to arena 6, just past the basketball courts to join your friends in a game of ping pong.
The skateboarders could all roll by the tennis courts and start busting ollies over the net. Then the football players would rush right down the middle of the the BMX dirt track just as the offroad monster truck guys come over and push the whole lot of them off the cliff to the delight of the rock climbers hanging out in the area.
YEAH!