MMOGs Shift Gears, Online Crime Up

Next Generation has a pair of articles about the Massive scene today. One is an interview with NCSoft's Ryan Seabury about the company's shift away from the fantasy genre, and the other a short piece stating that in-game crime is on the rise in Japan as the popularity of MMOs continues to rise. From the NCSoft article: "There's a distinct lack of an online home for the wider action gaming crowd in the MMOG arena today. Although we've seen a general trend towards more action and more mainstream gaming in MMOs, still nothing is in the same league as your typical team based FPS style gameplay. We want to provide that home to the masses of action gamers out there, looking for over-the-top action. Our core gameplay mechanic and pace attracts the action gamer, but we subversively immerse them deeper into the world as they play, via the fiction, the item hunting, the crafting, the vehicle customization, the arenas, and so on."

Comments

Re:Actually, Planetside has none of those problems

[Moraelin]

Well, ok, I'll give WoW that. It does have farming, though you probably realize that you don't really have to compete with that. The only way you'd end up in direct competition with those is if you too planned to sell gold on eBay, but I'm thinking you didn't.

What you accused it of, however is rampant cheating, cracking, and scamming. I can tell you firsthand that it's not the case.

The quip about having access to lots of CD keys, I'm not even sure what to make of it. They have access to the keys they bought, and that's that. Even if you told someone your CD key (but not many people are stupid enough to do that), once you've already used it to open an account, it's not usable again. So it would be of exactly zero use to anyone.

Look, I'm not saying you should play WoW or whatever. If it's not your favourite genre, fair enough, you're better off playing something else.

Noone's forcing you to play it, so you don't have to invent completely bogus problems to talk your way out. Just don't play it if you don't want to, and that's that.

Or to put it otherwise, no offense, but please stick to stuff you've actually played and problems you've actually experienced when you want to complain about something. You're so far off the mark, that it's like reading someone complaining about sniper-camping in Leisuresuit Larry, or about the selection of racing cars in Quake 3.