Do Licensed MMOs Inherit A Disadvantage?

Thanks to Stratics for its editorial discussing the problems faced by the licensed massively multiplayer game. The author points out: "Star Wars, The Matrix, Middle Earth - these are just some of the pre-existing worlds that are making the MMOG leap", and goes on to lament: "One of the problems is that you have to create an entire believable, explorable world. This is hard enough as it is, but then you have to cater to pre-existing notions of that world. Fans are your main target group here, and they have that world all locked up tight in their heads. Prepare for Foaming-at-the-Forum disease, my illustrious developers, prepare well." We've previously covered other aspects of this dilemma, but do licenses bring excessive expectations to a persistent world where everyone wants to be the hero?

Comments

But they are the shape of things to come.

[will_die]

The big licened MMORPG are the things to come after SWG. Here you can release an extremly poor MMORPG with extermly stupid design(thanks raph) yet sell 300,000 because of the name attached. Then you can expect to keep less then 1/3 but while you are being paid to develop the game after which you try to get people to sign up.
As for how to do it, you have to set up a world that feels like the movies or books and allows them to interact with areas mentioned in the book.
Middle Earth looks like it is taking a good view of it, they have said that the areas from the movies will be in the game but after the ring bearer or whoever the important person/event passed through/happened so that you cannot modify the even of the story, and no climbing over the characters.

Re:But they are the shape of things to come.

[Dragoon412]

The problem with the idea of just selling boxes for an MMOG is the cost inherent in developing the game.

I don't have any hard numbers to support it, but it seems to be that with development times on MMOGs taking so much longer than other games, selling them at the same price point, which is the current practice* as other games would mean less profit, or possibly even taking a loss per unit sold.

And I know, more box sales will ultimately lead to more subscriptions, but at this point, the MMOG market is largely cannibalizing itself. The market for MMOG games with non-skill based combat systems that require hundreds upon hundreds of hours of tedious monster-slaying, with game engines that handle like a 14th-hand rip off of Chainmail is completely saturated. To that end, I think the idea of pulling off what SWG did is only going to work for huge titles. Middle Earth Online may be able to do it too, but aside from WoW, I really can't think of another title that's even been announced that'll have enough clout to pull that off.

The future of MMOG design is going to change drastically. There's an absolutely massive untapped audience of more casual gamers that want more action-based games and don't have thousands of hours to invest in a game, and don't want to be alienated from their friends because they went to bed early one night, missed an awesome experience grind group, and now they can't group anymore because there's a 3-level difference.

Planetside, conceptually, was a great stab at that market. Unfortunately, the fuckups at SoE mismanaged it into the ground. They ruin everything they touch...

Anyways, without getting into a rant about what's wrong with MMOGs, just watch: the first person to make a more skill-based MMOG (be it FPS-style, or more sim-ish) that appeals to casual gamers (i.e. no systems like "levels" that only fragment the player base, or absurd time requirements to advance) will be a very, very wealthy individual.

While I was unemployed, I actually wrote up some design documents for such a game... got a 'real' job before I had the chance to pitch it, though, and I haven't had time to work on it since.

*At least until they realize they're about to tank and start offering free downloads of the client online.

Re:But they are the shape of things to come.

[Mprx]

Such a game already exists. Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates is completely skill based, with no real levels (levels exist but have extremely minor gameplay effect), and does not require any great time commitment. This is an ideal game for casual players, and still has enough in-depth content (eg. player run economy) for the hardcore players. It's also written in Java so it's crossplatform, and it doesn't require great hardware or internet connection. You can try it for free and subscription isn't too expensive.

Re:But they are the shape of things to come.

[Dragoon412]

So the action-based MMOG genre is zero for one. What's the boring non-action market?

See, I can understand why Planetside's comparitive failure is off-putting for some (stupid) investors, but what's the success rate of EQ-styled games? For every one successful game, a handful of others tank. The only ones that've enjoyed any real commercial success at this point are Ultima Online, EverQuest, and Dark Age of Camelot. That success can be mainly attributed (at least it would seem) to being the first MMOG to the market, being the first 3D MMOG, and being the first MMOG to feature organized PvP, respectively.

AO's barely hung on, and its spectacular failure of a launch nearly destroyed it. Horizons, Asheron's Call 2, Earth and Beyond, Shadowbane, and many other games have been major losers.

Others, like SWG and Asheron's Call have been moderately successful. And then there's Final Fantasy XI, which, while doing well worldwide, is not exactly a sweeping success in the United States, and has a freakishly high rate of cancellations (anecdotal evidence: I started playing with a group of 30-some people on release day, and currently none of them have active subscriptions anymore, and haven't for months).

The risk isn't necessarily greater with action-based MMOGs than traditional MMORPGs. Certainly there have been more flame-outs amongst traditional games. And on top of that, the potential revenue from a very large, untapped market is much greater than the current, competetive market.

Besides: think of it as a good thing. The supposed risk will frighten off the likes of EA and other penny-pinching investors that are more interested in rushing some shovelware EQ clone out the door. When such a game does get made, it'll most likely be free of the types of people responsible for bug-addled crap like Horizons and Earth and Beyond.

Re:But they are the shape of things to come.

[*weasel]

the box sales of MMOGs relative to their subscription numbers

This is the main support I keep coming back to. EQ is a multi-million selling box, but never got much past 400k subscribers. But perhaps the people who left were merely powergamers of a different flavor? Perhaps those who tried EQ and quit went on to be non-casual gamers in AC, DAoC, or SW:G.

Box sales vs subscriptions is strong evidence, but it's not quite conclusive. At this point, I think only the non-subscription rate for players who tried playing a persistent game casually and quit would be conclusive evidence. Of course, only a few big publishers would have that data (SOE, MS, EA), and they're not likely to share :)

However, SOE's focus on that potential market (with the friendlier-than-EQ Planetside and SW:G), and EA's focus (with the friendlier UO:X) are pretty good indicators for those of us without direct data.

MMOGs cannibalize each others' players

In my experience, (thankfully for the genre) this has not yet happened. Players come, players go - but no persistent game to date has stolen large numbers of players from its predecessors. DAoC has grown not by taking active players from EQ/UO/AC, but by catching the attention of players who had already left those games.

Are levels really meaningful? I would argue that they're not. They're shallow, contrived, and serve no real purpose.

Devil's Advocates have the advantage of asking the occassional loaded question :)

truly I agree with you: (time investment) + (repetition) != (meaning) || (achievement)

Still, there is no denying the attachment that hardcore players place on their irrationally-uber-characters. They will pay monthly fees for games they hardly play anymore due solely to the attachment to those bits. That's a dependable revenue source that I'm certain publishers consider when thumbing through design docs.

Lateral advancement is a noble goal - but how do we strike a balance between new and old players? What happens when a community of the 'old guard' suddenly encounters 'fresh meat', who very quickly, change the entire way the game is played due their new tactics and skill. EQ is largely future-proof in this regard, as player skill plays such a minor role.

A true multiple-axis advancement system would constantly be under fire though. Does the ability for a new Hero to spring up overnight lessen the feeling of achievement?

I tend to think not, but we don't exactly have a live example to study. ... the bar has been set so low for MMOGs that there's nothing compelling people who aren't already involved in MMOGs to try them.

This is certainly an accurate, albeit sad, assessment of the genre. New MMO players are joining the genre to be sure, but fans from other genres aren't. Perhaps it's because of how hard level-based design makes it to indoctrinate a new friend (picking the right server, levelling, etc). Or more simply: watching someone play EQ is less fun than watching paint dry.

It's about choice.

Adding choice, is turning away from the tried-and-true.

It's not that you're undercutting the fun people find in EQ - it's that a company has to be convinced to invest millions in a game targetted at an audience that arguably may not even want to play an MMO, instead of churning out an incremental improvement in the proven style.

As for action MMOs... there may yet be technical hurdles keeping publishers away. World War 2 Online has a distinctly non-massive 64 unit visibility limit, and Planetside does client-side hitscan (not surprising there are/were hacks).

intellectual property owners have the last say.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to add that very often developers don't have a choice with what they can do with a licence.

As an example, look at the licenced properties in racecar games. Until recently, licenced car brands weren't even allowed to *take damage* in a race. The car companies thought it was bad that the representations of their products might get broken when the player ran into a wall at 150mph. The car companies have now started to lighten up as they get used to working with developers - but it's a similar thing with MMORPGs - or any other game that uses licenced intellectual property.

The owner of that property doesn't want it acting in any way that would be contradictory to their valuable image. This inherently hurts any game that you try to build using the licence. You can't do anything unpredictable, and certainly can't kill off a well-known non-player character for the sake of furthering an original plot. For example, say you were adapting the Lord Of The Rings to a videogame. Here's my take on it:

Act 1, Level 1, prelude cutscene: Sam dies and nobody cares.

I think it would make a much better *game* to eliminate the whiny characters to build dramatic tension (or comedic relief), but the licencing rules would probably say that Sam must make it through to the end of the game because the story has to follow that of the book and movies. And in a MMO game, it gets worse. Because:

(1) There was only one Han Solo - duplicate characters are kind of stupid. If there were thirty people walking around all claiming to be Darth Vader it would just be silly.

(2) Even if I could play Han Solo, I'd want to hunt Ewoks - but this goes totally against character. As such, George Lucas would not want to allow me the choice of doing this because it will tarnish Han Solo and just look wrong to the eyes of the other players.

So if you cut out the major characters, this leaves you with playing the background characters that nobody really cared about in the movie. You've got the world - environments, cultures and the physics of how that world works - but that's pretty much it.

Re:intellectual property owners have the last say.

[notamac]

I think the best example of getting around this kind of stuff is Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

Whilst not an MMO at all, it was still a decent RPG in its own right, and it was interesting because it placed you as a major character in the Star Wars universe... just not at the same time as the trilogy (and its lacklustre prequil trilogy) occured: instead it placed you 4000 years before hand.

In doing so, it gave the game designers great freedom in how the developed characters, whilst still holding true to everything that is Star Wars (the force, light side, dark side, sand people, jawa, etc...)

Methinks this is the way that future MMO's should go in adapting licenses to games.

Not just with licenses

[MMaestro]

do licenses bring excessive expectations to a persistent world where everyone wants to be the hero?

Yes and beyond that. Technology today is allowing people to do things in games better than we could've imagined. Nowadays simple press releases have to be carefully worded since the simple mention of an "online world" could mean MMO, or "mature theme" could mean a survival horror type game. Its not just video game licenses that can be tagged with huge unattainable expectations, a company could also generate the same (or more in some cases) amount of hype which ultimately leads to a bad game or bad reviews.

Re:Not just with licenses

[Ayaress]

It's a different kind of problem, though. This isn't just about expectations in gameplay and quality that hype builds up - this is expectations in the game design and content that years of reading books, watching movies or TV shows, and following an immense existing body of "knowledge" on how Middle Earth or the Star Wars universe or the Matrix works.

When we first heard about, say, the Elderscrolls games, or everquest, we had no preconcieved notions of how the world behind the games functions, because it's new to us.

With non-MMO games based on licenses, there's a step up. Fans of the previous works already have some knowledge of the game world, but a single player game is easily constrained in ways to make it work.

Now, the step up to a licensed MMO game. First, you can't constrain them, since the game world has to be functional. Second, you have to have a LOT more content in the game, and it still has to fit the existing concept of what the world is like. Star Wars is probably the worst of them, since the book series has set forth a storyline from before Episode I until several decades after Episode VI.

Plus, in these game worlds, the fans have always known them through the eyes of the Great Hero. That works good in a single player game, because it's ok if you have 50,000 players out there all playing as Legolas or Luke Skywalker in that case.

But an MMO game takes place through the eyes of a slightly above-average person for the most part. Who the fuck is this Wookie named Sheyan, and why is he dancing? Everybody wants to be the hero, they all want to be Jedi, but that's not the way MMORPGs work.

Licensing can suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Licenses also work against games that I'd otherwise play, but hate the license.

I was looking for a good RPG to play a few months ago, right around when KOTOR came out. I absolutely despise Star Wars, so I didn't pick it up until just recently. And, barring all the Star Wars crap, it's pretty good.

World Design

[xanderwilson]

There's an great old AD&D book, called "World Building" or something like that, and it helped me immensely as I was doing stuff like this for fiction. It talked, I believe, about the difference between top-down world creation vs. "create as you go" creation. It's easier to create exciting and new landscapes and situations when you use the latter, but you might run into problems. You eliminate those problems by creating, say, the ecosystems and weather and geography first, and then the politics and histories, etc. But that might lead to less exciting stuff at first and it might be a lot of work in vain if you never get a chance to use more than a small patch of grass before you realize nobody's interested.

Alex.

Re:World Design

[bluemeep]

No, I'm pretty sure it's the "World Builder's Guidebook" he's talking about. Which really is a pretty darn handy thing to keep on-hand if you need to build a believable kingdom/town/planet every now and again.

Resident Evil

[ronfar]

Resident Evil was an unlicensed video game adaptation of Zombie which, I believe, is the overseas name for Dawn of the Dead (the 1970's version). The creator acknowledges he was inspired by Zombie but of course the idea of zombies are in the public domain and he didn't have to have any kind of IP license from the people who own Dawn of the Dead. (Who would have had less chance of prevailing in court than Universal did when they took Nintendo to court for the similarities between King Kong and Donkey Kong.) Now, if they come out with a video game based on the remake of Dawn of the Dead it will have limitations that Resident Evil didn't have to put up with.

Resident Evil has all kinds of stuff that wasn't in Dawn of the Dead, Hunters, zombie dogs, sharks, ravens, etc... If they had had to follow the movie license exactly, they wouldn't have been able to put all that stuff in there.

Villainy

[1WingedAngel]

"[D]o licenses bring excessive expectations to a persistent world where everyone wants to be the hero?"

Actually, from what I've seen, the difficulty would lie in the number of people who want to be the villain. It is a very popular role, but, unfortunately, one that the game developers never really flesh out. Villains, by nature, do dastardly, nasty, things that game developers (and the companies holding the license) don't want to give the characters freedom to do.

Re:Villainy

[UrgleHoth]

Existing MMORPGs DO have villians, and plenty of them. They are called griefers.

Just don't be the hero.

[LNO]

It sounds so simple, doesn't it?

I currently play SW:G with two good friends. We group together occasionally, and they're steadily grinding through professions to unlock their force-sensitive slot (that is, to have the ability to make a Jedi character). Being a Jedi holds absolutely no interest for me.

I can't be Han Solo, and I knew that going in. Instead, I'm Jawbone Mandible, owner and proprietor of McJawbone's Golden Mandibles, fast food to the galaxy. I can't even kill a crippled Ewok, but I can whip up some bio-engineered food that's in high demand. Want to take absolutely no damage from the next five attacks? Drink some Flameout; I'll sell you a glass of 6 drinks for only a couple hundred credits.

There are many players who desperately want to become the hero, have their lightsaber, pretend to be Darth Maul that they spend hours grinding boring professions to do it. There are those who want millions of credits so they can buy their way through some professions, and so they try to sell food at inflated prices.

I'm able to undersell them (fun for me!) and get a pile of money (more fun still!), and since I have absolutely nothing to do with it .. I've hit a wall.

If I wanted to be a Jedi, I'd burn through those tens of millions in a heartbeat. Since my friends want to be a Jedi, and they gave me some seed money to start when I created Jawbone, I give them a couple million credits apiece each week as 'investment dividends'. With the rest of it ...

Well, want 100,000cr to jump into the Sarlacc pit and take a screenshot? Here ya go.

1,000cr for each second you can spend alive within melee range of a Krayt dragon?

500,000cr to the first player to race from Mos Espa on Tatooine to Jaxian Bay on Naboo, get an item from my friend acting as the relay point, and get back to me?

The list goes on. Basically, if you want to rewrite the saga, it ain't gonna happen. Everyone's gonna want to rewrite the saga. Barring a player lottery in which one lucky person gets to be Main Character Foo, you're relegated to a background character. Make the most of it, or play a different game.

Re:Just don't be the hero.

[b0r0din]

Being a Jedi holds absolutely no interest for me.

I'm glad you feel that way, but unfortunately you're in the minority.

If you ask me, there are two inherent problems with any MMORPG: the heroism dilemna and the villain dilemna.

How do you create a game in which each individual desires to be a hero? And how do you create a game in which villains are more rare?

Now as far as the heroism dilemna goes, it's very simple. You've got thousands of people on one server, the competition to be #1 or even legendary is very fierce. In a FPS, there's maybe 4-8 people in competition with each other, and it's more even a battle. In an MMORPG, you've got maybe 50-100 people all vying for top dog, all wanting to be the hero of legend, in some cases taking names like SirLanceslot or something similar. People want to be noticed, to be famous.

Well it's just not possible. Most (and not all, as in your example) don't want to be a simple security guard. They have those jobs out of game, it's called working in a cubicle farm or Walmart. They want to wield the sword of destiny or be part of a moving plotline.

Personally, I don't think MMORPGs will ever solve this dilemna. They can't devote enough time to be personal to each individual player and remain profitable. Possibly in the future, someone will come up with a ruleset that solves this problem, or maybe AI will become so good as to solve it. But I'm fairly doubtful. Smaller non-masive MORPGS would be ok, but we've yet to see a really good implementation. (I don't really consider NWN that although it's close, the graphics and worlds need to be better and less Lineage-like.)

The other dilemna is the villain dilemna. This one isn't so much a problem, it can be reasonably handled. But it applies to griefers. How do you prevent people from being complete jerks, stealing kills, killing other players in a PK environment, etc?

The answer is pretty simple: a self-policing society. But how do you self-police a society when everyone wants to be a hero and not a security guard? Maybe a few people would want to be the griefer-slayer, but not many.

Now, you could do a couple of things for both of these.

The problem with most people is wanting to be the hero without doing anything heroic. There's nothing heroic about slaying foo 20hrs/day like every other MMORPG that rewards the person who spends more time on the game. What is heroism, anyway? In the chivalrous sense, it's putting your life in danger for another. You have to risk something to be a hero. In a lot of examples, you have to die or be horribly maimed. Well, how to apply that to an MMORPG? Realism wouldn't hurt - or would it? Maybe people lose limbs, are horribly disfigured, or die regularly. Permadeath. Maybe that's what the society needs. That's skill-based, it forces players to be strategic and careful in combat. But it's not popular.

Now, let's use this in a society, let's just say medieval-fantasy since that is overdone right now. You are a local blacksmith. You don't fight, you just make really nice swords. You are rewarded for your swordmaking with lots of money from players who rely on your ability. You don't die so your skill level increases. Every once in a while, you make a masterpiece. Maybe only once or twice in the game, sort of by accident. This sword is so special that you can only give it to the right person. Maybe you're fitting into a bigger game plot that you aren't aware of. You're a part of that world's history at that point. You fit a niche. And you aren't dying.

Now, the other people who want to be heroes can go ahead and fight for fame and so on. But they die and permadeath takes hold and they don't retain their hero status. The real heroes would be revealed in this sort of society because of their skill. Maybe instead of level, there are certain incarnations of heroes. You may die a lot, but if you are smart and become a hero through certain deeds and then die, you retain some of what you had even though you are dea

Re:Just don't be the hero.

[miyako]

I've been working on designing a persistant world for Neverwinter Nights, and I have been considering many of the points that you brought up.
The first thing I thought of was to get rid of the teleporting in the game. Town portal spells are ok, but general transit just takes away from the locales. Teleporting is definitely a double edged sword, I think the best way to handle this, and what I have been working on is to allow players to travel to specific locations they have already visited. Essentially the way I am handling this is that in most of the interesting locations, there are mages who run teleportation booths. Sometimes they are out in the open, sometimes they are hidden in secret areas. When you run accross one of them, you can buy a warp coin which will allow you to teleport back to that location a set number of times. The cost and number of uses depends on how exotic the spot is.
Creating seemingly personalized quests is at the top of the list of "Hard Things To Do", the trick I have been using is a series of branching quests to make the quests seem more personal.
While this might not scale well, in this persistant world which will have about 60 people max, there will be 3 or 4 initial paths that a player can start out on, depending mainly on their alignment. Within each of these paths, there will be some branching depending on what quests have been completed. For example, if someone has already completed the "Kill the bandits in the forest" quest (just an example), then the next player would find a "Kill the troll under the bridge" quest. The plan is to have these 4 main paths and their branches intertwine and cycle in such a way that what previous people have done will effect the game, and will start back at the previous point at such a times as the players who have already completed earlier tasks will no longer have much to do in the areas that the quests they completed are starting over in.
Timing is going to play a big part in this and will require a lot of testing, but hopefull it will end up working for most players.
Weapons and monster dropped items is another area I've had a large focus on. Essentially I plan to eliminate "random treasure" and focus instead of collecting sellable items. For example, if the party goes up against a pack of giant spiders, they will be able to collect venom from the spiders to sell to alchemists and potion makers, or to use in magically enchanting their items.
One thing I hope to do is add the ability for players to specialize in creating items out of some of these materials. For example a mage merchant character might be able to pay a group of fighters to escort him into the ruins of an ancient library infested with undead so he can obtain scrolls that will teach him to make a powerful bone wand out of the bones of a lich. Or perhaps a blacksmith character is willing to pay top dollar for junk parts of a mythril golem in order to forge one of a kind weapons.
I think though the reason that these types of things are not present in games like EQ is that companies looking to make money on a game are afraid to take a gamble that people will want to play the part of a blacksmith, or that people will get mad they missed out on part of the quest.

MMO != best use of license

[t1nman33]

The MMO is a good format for a game, but it is not always the BEST way to get large numbers of people playing together at one time. MMOs are best-suited to worlds where there is little or no prexisting fiction, where players themselves create the epic battles--like the recent Everquest adventure when players banded together to kill an unkillable monster.

Part of the problem with games like SWG is that everybody wanted to play as Boba Fett, or Luke Skywalker, or Han Solo. Nobody wanted to play as Stormtrooper #4 or Rebel Soldier #17 or Young Shopkeeper or Man on Bantha.

The action revolves around a few heroes. Why should players go through the trouble of inventing backstory and drama and their own adventures when those things have already been created for them?

IMHO, if the same framework for SWG had been used as the framework for an anonymous Sci-Fi MMO, with none of the trappings of Star Wars, I think it would have been more successful. There are GREAT tools in that game for creating communities, for making up your own adventures, for running a fun, playable world.

But when everybody knows that the "greatest" adventures have already been had--the Battle of Yavin, etc.--there's no incentive to try to do better, because the fiction has already established that it can't be done. In this situation, then, the fiction turns out to be a limiting factor, not a building one.

Re:MMO != best use of license

[Marc_Hawke]

This is how I feel. There were two things that made me never even concider SW:G.

1. The official site required you to make an account and log in just to look at the RESULTS of the poll on their front page. I can understand logging in to vote, or to post on the forums, or even READ the forums in extreme cases....but to log in just to look at the results of a poll was insane. I wrote to the webmaster saying that I would never go back to his site again. (And only broke that twice that I know of.) (I'll admit, I was being petty, but dangit...I'm allowed to be petty with my own time. :) )

2. The main reason I didn't care to follow SW:G was because it was Star Wars. The bits of information that I did glean sounded good. The artwork was excellent. It seemed like a high-quality product. BUT!! It was Star Wars. There was no way I wanted to spend my time with a million fruit-cake fans. The 'gamer maturity' (that has nothing to do with actual maturity, just with how well you play games and interact in a gaming environment) level was instantly cut by 75% simply because of that license.

Not to mention the message boards. There was ONE!! topic. There were 30 million threads, but ONE topic. "Being a Jedi" There were no other conversations. It was incredible. It was disgusting.

They should make another one. SoE should take the technology, the game systems, the CS departments, ie and make another game. They could use the same code-base, just spend a while making all new artwork and nomeclature, and make a new 'non-Star Wars' mmorpg. They could use the same CS staff, and the same infrastructure.

They should at least make a pretense of doing it as a different company though. Think of the money they'd save in development and maintanence. They'd also have much more freedom of expression on this 'alternate world.'

Anyway... It was specifically Star Wars that chased me away from SW:G....and I LIKE Star Wars.

Re:MMO != best use of license

[t1nman33]

Sure, I know what you mean. I hung out on the SWG boards for a year or more, I beta tested, I signed up for a year and played the game pretty hardcore for awhile.

But in the end, the problem for me was that all the really exciting parts of Star Wars had to do with either grand battles or being a hero, and you have trouble doing that in an MMO.

Frankly, I get far more enjoyment playing Unreal Tournament and pretending to be part of an army fighting to capture power nodes than I did in weeks upon weeks of roleplaying and crafting and exploration in SWG. After awhile, all those beautiful trees and sand dunes and creatures just became eye candy with no real excitement or sense of accomplishment beyond grinding and the occasional interaction. And I find that I feel more interaction with members of a random team playing a round of Onslaught.

Asheron's Call 2

[cgenman]

I have it on good authority that Asheron's Call 2, while not a tremendous success, did break even. The company who created it, Turbine, had enough free cash to buy back the rights to Asheron's Call 1 from Microsoft, which should be considered a very successful MMPORPG (still going strong after all of these years, first MMPORPG with larger, ever-changing story archs). They've even announced an Asheron's Call 1 expansion.

These are now the people working on LotR and DnD. They've learned that a flexible presentation in their engine allowing for tremendous dramatic plot changes is far more important than having the highest resolution textures (At one point during development they bragged that the texture on the wall of one of the houses was the size of Asheron's Call 1's entire displayed texture budget). While they may not be able to do anything dramatically different with LotR, this should give great freedom to the DnD team to come up with original experiences for players. Like when they teleported 1/2 of the Asheron's Call 1 players into an undersea disco for an evening of boogying down, then denied any knowledge of having done so. Or the giant menacing figure that appeared in the sky one day, only to land a month later.

I agree that action-based MMPORPG's are the future. Lag isn't as bad as it once was, but it continues to cripple our designs. There are, of course, ways around lag. You could have players enter an X like shell when attempting to fight with another, effectively going from a MMPORPG to a somewhat lag-free standard FPS and back again. X, in this case, referring to the Anime. You can offload more of the processing to the client side, allowing for more cheating (at least you have a game worth cheating on). You can predictively process on the client, and Re-synch the game world as needed. You can limit movement to a square-by-square tile world, making processing calculations very simple.

Yahoo's Puzzle Pirates is a good example of where the genre is going. Light games somewhat divorced from the click-click-click nature of their predecessors, removed of the 3D graphics which can easily sink a project, and (so far) tremendously successful. Gunbound, ostensibly a MMPOAC (Massively Multiplayer Online Artillery Clone), is really just a Artillery Clone with a good lobby.

Point and click isn't the future. Drama is the future. Gaming is the future. Lag? Lag is the rural electrification on the phone bill of the MMPORPG designer's notebook.

Re:Asheron's Call 2

[Mprx]

Three Ring's Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates, not Yahoo's. You're not the first person I've seen who misread the name, maybe they should rename it to just "Puzzle Pirates".

I can't help remembering...

[freeBill]

...all the people who said this same kind of thing about "The Lord of the Rings."

Even Tolkien himself suggested that all the fans had their own visions of the trilogy in their heads and any attempt to put it on film was going to fail to meet those expectations.

Then along came a guy named Peter Jackson.

Depends on the License

[NedR]

Whether or not a license would be more difficult to turn into a MMOG seems like it would sort of depend on the license. For example, take two different Sci-Fi licenses that are being turned into MMOGs; The Matrix and Dune. On the one hand, you have The Matrix, which is relatively easy to recognize, because it's based for the most part on the world we live in right now, with a few changes. Also, part of the beauty of The Matrix is that it's all about breaking the rules, and as a result, many of the smaller ideas are left to the imagination, and can be tweaked by developers for gameplay purposes.

Dune is just the opposite. Frank Herbert meticulously built a completely alien universe from the ground up (though he borrowed liberally from many different historical periods). People who have not read the books and are just getting into it may end up a little overwhelmed, and even worse for developers (although fantastic for fan boys like myself), Herbert chose to write about almost every single aspect of the universe in meticulous, almost obsessive detail, meaning there's a lot that would have to be packed in to please nitpickers.