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The MMORPGs of 2005
MMORPGDot.com has a two-part piece on the upcoming Massive games of 2005. The first article in the series touches on big name titles expected out this year like Matrix Online and Tabula Rasa, while the second article mentions lesser known small budget titles. From the big-title article: "If a list of features could make a great game, Dark & Light would be the first. NP Cube is promising some really ambitious things like a 40.000km gameworld without any loading, the possibility to become the king or conquer a town and enough goodies to whet your appetite. The question is how many of those features will actually be present at release?"
That's part of the problem with so many coming out. It doesn't matter how great the game is AS MUCH as it matters if you can find other people to co-operate with/fight online, or as much as it matters as that is the game your friends are playing. Hence the importance of marketing the game - something small developers can't afford to do well and players may not have the patience to wait around for word of mouth to succeed.
Case in Point: Allegiance was by far the best MMO I have ever played - but it died due to lack of players because MS dropped the ball in marketing it.
It has the premise to be a great game.
- The combat system is very cool at first and it sustains enough interest (with higher abilities) as you level up.
- There are TONS of different abilities to choose from. The special moves (in all skill trees) look awesome
- Tons of cool clothes/items and other shit available. Where else can you find women characters with short leather minis.
- PvP!!!
- The missions look ok but boring since there is no live content available (to avoid story spoilers)
- There is quite a bit to do in the game (crafting/exploring/missions/in-game parties/martial arts tournaments etc etc etc)
- The game looks and runs good even in low settings (while still running in debug mode)
- Monthly cinematic to advance story with chances of being in the cinematic!
- Excellent player community.
- Good response from devs and support staff.
But then again, there are problems. As with EVERY game, some people will bitch about something. There are issues being resolved as we speak in the Matrix online. Some people will find some classes unbalanced. Some people will not like the flexibility of changing classes etc etc. But I for one am definitely giving it a shot with an open mind.
peace out
NP Cube is promising some really ambitious things like a 40.000km gameworld without any loading
You know, with a fractal algorithm and high enough precision location variables, I could give you a ten bajillion square mile game world next week. It'd suck as there's be nothing to do there except go up and down some hills and mountains, maybe occasionally swim across an ocean or screen, but it'd be huge.
A large gameworld is utterly meaningless without content. Gameplay is about density of content. Once you have a good density, sure, more is always good.
I'd rather play a game with 4km^2 of content with five really well considered pieces of content per meter than a 40,000 km^2 world with one automatically placed generic feature every 10m. Sure, it may technically have even more content than the smaller world but the quality and density of content will make me choose the smaller one.
At the end of the day, do you really want to play in a huge 1:1 simulation of Nebraska or would you have more fun at a much smaller, well designed theme park?