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.

Comments

Is SWG really faltering?

[kherr]

SWG has had its ups and downs (many would say mostly downs), but the servers I play on seem to be growing in population. There has not been any server consolidation, so it's not a situation of coalescing populations. The third expansion, The Trials of Obi-Wan, is about to go live (it has already for pre-orders) and seems to have learned from some of the WoW successes. The new planet, Mustafar (the lava planet), is geared for higher-end characters with harder, longer quests. There are a number of instance dungeons involved in the quests, eliminating the original problem of waiting for a previous party to finish.

It's unfortunate that SWG Japan is not going well, but the game itself seems to be overcoming a lot of the chaos caused by the combat upgrade a while back. In fact, a lot of the loudest complainers are now running around bragging about how they can solo the toughest mobs. Those of us who prefer a more cerebral combat system long for the old one, but we have adjusted. Change is guaranteed in an MMOG, I think.

Re:Is SWG really faltering?

[Phil the Canuck]

It's a good expansion for sure, but I have to question whether or not they've learned from the past. Many players are currently gated in quests waiting for over-camped static spawns to appear. What's worse is that for at least one quest the static spawn NPC also has a 1-in-eleventymillion chance of dropping a very desirable loot item, making the spawn camping unbearable.

Goes to Prove

[Bruha]

That the MMORPG community by and large is small and the dot com projections for some reason are still being used to base making new games. When WOW dominates the world MMO gaming landscape in subscribers alone, it tells you that there's not enough room for other games. Lately we have seen a trend on pushing out blockbuster games, when in fact, there may only be room for one blockbuster game out there. There are plenty of flourishing niche games such as Asheron's Call and Everquest. Even Rubies of Eventide survived.

SWG on the other hand, has not lived up to expectations in many areas. With no support/enforcement of role playing servers, things have generally degenerated into the basic teen infested l33t first person shooter. Serious players dont want to see someone named ch3wb4c4 running around spouting leet speak.

There is also a disturbing trend to drag the movie gone video game scene into the mix. If SWG is having problems then Middle Earth Online is going to fail miserably, notwhithstanding that Turbine Entertainment is at the helm of that game. 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.

So far Blizzard has done a great job with few hiccups in World of Warcraft. I would expect them to be the superMMO for at least the next 2 years.

We Need Better Terms

[quantax]

The terms being used lately have been pretty vague and incorrect. Sony is not releasing a free MMORPG, its releasing a non-subscription based MMORPG in which you pay for it once. Then the question comes about, are they going to do what Guild Wars does? As Guild Wars is not a true MMORPG but rather a pseudo one with MMO elements since with the exception of the cities, everything is instanced. This keeps their costs lower as well, so I wonder whether Sony will be going the same route as well. We need to come up with a term to describe these games as calling them MMORPGs is misleading. Diablo2 was not considered an MMORPG, and it wasnt, but if you remove all the shiny stuff, thats what Guild Wars is undernearth for the most part: communal meeting points (Battle.net) that are jump points for quests and missions. I own Guild Wars, its great fun, but it shouldn't be called an MMORPG anymore than Diablo II on Battle.net should be called one. Perhaps MRPG or something along those lines.

Re:MMORPG's have some basic troubles

[vertinox]

Everquest and SWG and Ultima Online are still being played by people who were there at launch.

Ultima Online is a bitter shallow shell of its former self. At least I am bitter about it... I played since 1997-2000. The changes after Renaissance made the game not Ultima Online anymore.

I don't really know anyone how would still play that game unless they have a large investment into that.

I wish Richard G would get his original vision on for a new MMOG similar to UO.

engage the players brains, not just their wallets

[argStyopa]

In every MMOG the quest lines are variations of
a) kill creature x
b) find the red key for the red door
c) combinations or series of a & b.

Boring, yes? Why not leverage the power of the CPUs on people's desks to offer a DIFFERENT experience? I understand that in an MMOG with 4 million players you can't have as intricate and convoluted story lines as a single player game, but they could be more engaging - dynamically spawn a specific set of NPCs for a player to help, NPCs that change and develop over the course of adventures.

Using WoW as an example: character Adam enters Undercity for the first time. Immediately, a wandering NPC or three is created. It wanders the city, and if Adam comes close enough to it, it tries to engage him in conversation (and ultimately getting him involved in it's quest line). It's quest line is also randomized to some extent, but each stage might change the character so that if the player 'rescues' his sister, the player gets another wandering NPC (the sister) in a nearby town that does something similar. Or if the player finds his lost child, a couple of weeks later that NPC may have moved to another town or gotten married. The people change in the world according to a matrix of randomized possibilities to inhibit the walkthrus being posted everywhere on the web days later.

Then, let's say character Adam invites character Betty to join his party, and shares one of his personalized NPC quests with Betty. Then (here's the interesting part) Betty, when she turns in that quest, will 'meet' that NPC family. Now, she too can pick up quests from that network of developing NPCs...HOWEVER any progress she or Adam now make individually or together advances the plot. Meaning that Adam and Betty could both have the same quests, but if Betty finishes it, Adam may find an email from the NPC saying "Thanks for introducing us to Betty, she rescued Fido" and the quest disappears from Adam's log.

This is just off-the-top-of-the-head stuff, certainly it needs refinement. But you can see how very quickly the interlocking mesh of relationships would make for an intriguing and engaging world, much more like 'real life' than the static things we have now....