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MMOG Fortunes Rise And Fall
ringbarer writes "The disappointingly mismanaged MMO Star Wars Galaxies has hit another low. The Japanese translation of the game has barely managed to reach its first Birthday, and now it's been canceled. A Rough translation is available, but the original untranslated news can be found here." I'm not entirely sure, but it seems as though players who've paid beyond the end of December will have their accounts transferred to a US/EU server if they're so inclined. Otherwise they'll have their money refunded. Apparently money isn't something SOE is smarting for, at the AGC this past week President John Smedley announced that they'll be releasing what is essentially a free MMOG, with no monthly fee. Speaking of free, the always excellent Puzzle Pirates is essentially doing the same thing. They're also doing some crackerjack Halloween Events tonight, if you're interested in some swashing and some buckling. Dark Age of Camelot's events for today's holiday sound pretty neat too.
I'm glad to see that MMO games are looking into alternative revinue sources but I'm disturbed by the choices they're making; I dislike the concept of paying extra money for content and I really hate allowing people to pay to twink their character (it just encourages the company to create horrible imballances in order for people to buy more uber gear). It seems to me that the most obvious revinue source is not being capatalized on, Advertizing.
If you treated a MMO game a little like how a TV show is treated you could get a lot of money from large companies to pay for the maintainence of your servers; a 30 second to minute long comercial before a person logged onto a server would be reasonably painless mainly because they're looking at a loading screen anyways. I'm positive that Coke, Pepsi, McDonalds, etc would pay millions of dollars to have their commercial seen by WoW players for a month; if you look at the demographics of a MMO game the players are in the core market for these products.
Think of it this way 1 Million users, 20 logins a month, $0.05/login = $1,000,000/ month; that should cover most of the costs associated with running a MMO game.
It's the nature of the business. At any one time there can be only one really huge MMORPG, and right now it's WoW. Of course that will not last forever, just look at Everquest.
To a degree any MMORPG is frozen in place technologically. No matter how many expansion packs come out you can only upgrade an engine so much. Take a look at my beloved Anarchy Online for a good MMORPG that got completely left behind in time.
As long as MMORPG are popular this will be the pattern. There will always be something new on the horizon that will grab everyone's attention while leaving only a smaller population of die-hards behind.
Sorry but considering their track record Middle Earth Online's biggest handicap is Turbine. First and foremost they have pushed this game back so many times that its nearing irrelevance. Any grafting onto the success of the movies has long been lost. The game has also suffered a few near rewrites which pushed it back with rumors of 07 floating about!
Recent events include putting out an expansion for AC2 and then cancelling the game less than 3 months later. This is nearly a classic case of milking the existing playerbase for all the money you can get.
Lastly combine that with a reputation for tolerating cheaters, exploiters, and combat macros and MEO has a lot to overcome.
So MMOG fortunes do rise and fall and it shows just who really has the best production values. WOW turned out really well because Blizzard is a highly polished organization with competence from years of prodcuing games. For some companies their first product is a MMO and unfortunately it shows. Also the days of where you can build one of these in your garage and maintain that type of environment are probably long gone. Players do not tolerate very well bugs and downtime and the games which have these problems are usually quick to suffer from them.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I just played Vietcong 2. While it is not a perfect game it was enjoyable. For the maybe 10 hours I took me to complete it. The original seemed longer. Yet this for a MMORPG is nothing. EQ2 free trial offers more playtime. Vietcong 2 can barely be played longer although I suppose there are a few levels that have unlimited spawns (bits were you have to overcome defences and as long you have not crossed them new enemies keep coming in) were you could spend hours if you were so inclined.
Even games like Baldur Gate pale in the number of play hours next to a MMORPG. Lets face it, not many people play the same game for years and years. Everquest and SWG and Ultima Online are still being played by people who were there at launch.
Yes I am aware of games like counterstrike but if you are a diehard counterstrike player you will probably not still be playing on the same maps that were there at launch. CS, the sims, and Flightsim 2004 and other long lasting games are constantly updated by their users and it might even be argued that it is the users that create the game.
An MMORPG does not give the same freedom. Good luck doing even something as simple as creating your own "skin".
So rather then having longivity by constantly having new stuff added by unpaid monkeys, eh I mean dedicated users MMORPG's invariable try to last a long time by making progress slow. You will have to defeat an amazing amount of enemies once you get past the earlier levels, reading some quests in EQ2 reminds me more of a doom level then an RPG. I have to kill HOW many demon spawn? Where as the best RPG ever, Planescape Torment went out of its way to give you a way around the fights, there were only a tiny handfull needed, MMORPG's go for more hack&slash then Diablo.
Or to put it another way, MMORPG's are a grind. For regular RPG's there usually is somekind of experience/money cheat where by revisiting an area you can kill the same thing over and over if you need/want the reward. This is MMORPG's entire gameplay.
Because you are not alone and therefore you cannot be the hero of THE story they have totally removed the story based reward. SWG was worst in this respect. It basically HAD no story, just Elite type missions wich re-used the same stupid random message. Something like my little girls lost a flower please go kill a nest of rancors. The element of WTF was very high, the element of wanting to find out the ending zero.
EQ2 at first seems better but is still hopelessly basic. Almost all have the problem off you wondering, "Exactly how many blue gems has this girl found while sweeping anyway?". The simple problem off the fact that you and everyone get exactly the same quest even when that doesn't fit the story.
Only a tiny percentage of quests involve any roleplaying, you simply aren't allowed to make a choice. The choice between good and evil is basically just the architecture.
As an computerRPG MMORPG's typically fail. If you compare them to PnP RPG's then they are a joke. There is no roleplaying.
SWG in someways was an attempt to break some of the MMORPG's common pitfalls. It had a lot of customization, your character could easily look an individual with real control over body build, style and color of clothes and weapon choice.
Neither were you restricted to a handfull of jobs, you could choose and mix any of them.
So why did it so poorly? Well it is hard to explain. Perhaps people just didn't realize how good it was at its heart.
One of the things I still regret is the move away from the so called hologrind. For those who don't know: You could be a lot of different combo's of jobs but NOT a jedi with your normal character. To get one you need to unlock it by becoming a master in a random selection of jobs. Wich jobs they were could be revealed by using looted holocrons. Once you had mastered the required jobs you could become a jedi char.
The complaint was that this led to a lot of people trying jobs they didn't want to do ruining the economy bec
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"They are also not going to make a hit with dungeons and dragons online, since many players have invested hundreds of dollars in the game. Players would be reluctant to let it all gather dust on a shelf and give up on their favorite gathering places."
I'd just point out that this bit is a little silly. MMORPGs and "pen and paper" RPGs are considerably different experiences (just like "live action" and "pen and paper" are) to the point where they actually appeal to different audiences. I have little interest in MMORPGs because they seem to MOSTLY be about level-grinding and not about plots, interacting with other players and NPCs, politics, etc. Yes, I understand there is some of that in many MMORPGs, but in most of them that stuff tends to be restricted to high-level characters that spend lots of time leveling up. I played lots of text MUDs back in the day and this is what drove me away. The actual GAMEPLAY per se has seemed to advance very little since then.
What I want isn't a MMORPG that emulates the "pen and paper" experience, which is impossible, but a MMORPG that emulates the experience of a computer-style RPG, like Bloodlines or KotOR, where there IS leveling up and fiddling with weapons and gear and whatnot, but it takes a major back seat to advancing the story. In fact, advancing the story is often the key to "leveling up". I'd like a game where EVERY PC was integral to the plot, where every PC affects the world and more importantly, the other PCs. I think this goal is basically incompatible with the "Massive" part of MMORPGs which is why they don't seem poised to replace single-player RPGs.