True Fantasy Online May Be On Track for Xbox 2

German site GameZone is running a piece discussing the late, lamented True Fantasy Online. In it they mention that the Xbox MMOG may be released on the Xbox 2, based on commentary from the president of Level-5. From the article: "Now these hopes are affirmed by the level 5-Praesidenten Akihiro Hino, because in the Japanese Dorimaga said it that according to its estimates True Fantasy Live one on-line one could nevertheless still appear."

Comments

Lineage 2

[Dark Lord Seth]

I don't know what it's like for other MMORPGs, but Lineage 2 makes me feel.... icky. First of all, there's client stability and overall design that just seem poor. Sure, it looks good but there are several weird in-game glitches that make me wonder just how qualified the people at NCSoft are. These issues range from playability issues to client stability. Playability is not so bad, just a few minor glitches like monsters getting stuck and all that.

Client issues are a bit worse really, with the client regulary crashing on me for no good reason at all. The game often freezes as well, has weird graphic glitches that can lock up my entire PC and I get sudden disconnects for no real reason. All very annoying. While L2 boasts about having hundreds of thousands of paying subscribers, it's pretty evident that none of the monthly money they get go into development of the game, except perhaps a sequeal which would only serve to bring in more money.

I've heard stories about most MMORPGs being like this; the game appears to be nothing more then a poor release based on a proven addictive concept along with pre-existent competitive ( sometimes hostile ) player behaviour. The actual client or storyline doesn't really matter just as long as these two elements are in there. The question is, though, why the hell would anyone want to pay for such lousy services? I mean, I play L2, sure. But I do so on a free server at no cost at all. I don't pay a single cent for this worthless client I'm stuck with and the actual server runs on donations from the users.

But despite this and the fact that at least some people agree with me on this, MMORPGs keep popping up like bad weeds. Is it just a fad like all the "* Tycoon" games we had?

( On a different note, heard Slashdot solved the issues about the 503s and generally atrocious performance lately. Maybe they even decided to stop banning my subnet the whole damn day! Anyways, giving this a try again, so here goes... )

Re:Lineage 2

[Golias]

Come up with another type of massively-multiplayer game in which downtime is built in to the game concept (so players will be foreced to slow down and get to know each other), and some people will play it.

Anybody who learned about Pavlovian conditioning in Psych 101 understands why the system of nearly-random rewards makes these games so addictive, and why you eventually realize that you are not really having fun, but playing out of compusion. When people reach that point, they either quit, or decide that the company they keep while on-line is pleasant enough to stick around in spite of not caring much about the game itself.