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MMORPG Circle of Life

Posted by Zonk on from the out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new dept.

The Massive Gaming market continues to change. Wednesday marked the sunset of Earth and Beyond, a decision made by EA back in March due to a refocusing on future projects. While E&B heads out of the picture, the new French MMOG Saga of Ryzom opened its first US server this week after a lengthy beta period. Impressions of the game are available at Gamebunny and MMORPGDot. And looking towards the future, the Dungeons and Dragons Online website just went live yesterday.

3 of 38 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Brings up a startling question by chromaphobic · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I would be fskd is GTA VC stopped working on my PC one day

    In all likelyhood, one day it will stop working. It probably will be a long time from now, but at some point Windows will most likely be updated to the point where old software stops working.

    I haven't had it happed to any of my PC games just yet, but I have a stack of old Mac games that only work with OS 9 whose CD's are headed for the trash bin soon.

    At this point in time, I wouldn't expect the devlopers for the Mac port of the original Driver (for example) to go back and update it for OS X after all these years. I just accept it as one of the costs of forward progress.

    But, yeah, I might be a little upset if I'd put a lot of time into a MMO game and they just killed it one day (despite the fact that it's inevitable that every MMO will one day shutter it's doors.)

  2. Re:Brings up a startling question by warnerve · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think you are trying to compare apples and oranges. That is like complaining that GTA stopped working because you got rid of your PS2. If you want to continue to use GTA on the PC, then you need to maintain a machine that is capable of running it. The user base of the mmorpg don't have that option.

  3. Farewell to E&B (a year later) by BumbaCLot · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I have no idea what the % of E&B players were that migrated to Star Wars Galaxies, a game without space ships when it started, or EVE. I left E&B for SWG, EVE had no draw for me as I couldn't get out of my ship and be a true person in a RPG world.

    E&B had player balance issues as do all MMORPGs, the ID Matrix giving certain users on the server godlike abilities compared to the 1000s of other players out there and then nerfing them down to worthless status. I was one of the lucky ones who got to make tons of items with one. When the nerf came down, I left the game and started playing SWG. I knew they had database issues using flat files and no good editing tools, tons of devices and weapons had bad or non-existent drop rates and crafting became insane with tons of items never learnable after countless failures in deconstruction. The buyout and closing of Westwood all predicted the death of E&B long before this.

    I had loads of fun living out in space, helping newbs out with my top notch building and travel tours, and performing scouting duties at Tada-Oh gate for my guild.

    Hopefully the Sci-fi genre can produce another game with a budget to do it right again and keep getting better.