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MMORPGs And Franchises

Posted by Zonk on from the not-as-catchy-as-d&d dept.

MMORPG.com has an interesting piece on major franchises and their relation to massive games. They take a look at the question of whether or not virtual worlds are appropriate venues for IPs. From the article: "It's precisely because of that 'famous world' that we run into trouble. The more famous it is, the higher the expectations that players put on it. This leads to the developers having less and less flexibility in the way that their world is built, the rules that they choose to use, and the content that makes the game interesting."

2 of 70 comments (clear)

  1. WoW by Bonewalker · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Some good points about WoW have been made already. But, there is one reason and one reason only that WoW is huge: no pre-released, rush-to-meet-it launch deadline. And as far as I know, Blizzard has never done this. What do they do instead? They say "It'll be out when it is done. Not a day before." This attitude is what makes their games so fun. They actually make it good before they release it.

    Now some will argue that WoW was far from "done" when they released it, but that would be an asinine statement. All MMORPG's go through an initial struggle at launch because that is the first time real players, not the beta testers, get involved, and with millions more people checking it out, the glitches are bound to show up.

    But, I played WoW in beta, and am still playing it today, and while I do not agree with every change, or even necessarily their pace for patches and updates, I am quite satisfied with the game and happy to pay for it.

  2. Re:Living lives in an MMORPG by Sage+Gaspar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's because they implemented the license poorly and had no idea how to fix it. They needed to make the game more "Star Warzy" because they picked a time period where they could literally do nothing substantial with the major characters. Jabba and Han sat around chained to their theme parks all day handing out quests to retrieve power packs.

    One of their iconic classes, Bounty Hunter, had its iconic skill borked with no real PC bounties to hunt for god knows how long. Another, Smuggler, had (has) nothing to smuggle. Creature Handlers went from overpowered to useless and then to being omitted entirely. Jedi wavered between non-existent to flooding everything, trivial to kill, and then nearly impossible, and now back to trivial. I'm not even sure how the changes make things more "Star Warzy," it just prunes impotent classes and makes balancing trivial.

    Most damning of all, the "authentic" armor took a backseat to one and only one type of armor, composite, which I don't even recall seeing in the movies. Pistols and carbines took a backseat to rifles, martial arts, and mad scientists carrying bottles of disease.

    People who play a Star Wars game would want to see locations from the movies and some from the EU. Check. Exciting battles of Imperials vs. Rebels that have consequences. Failed. Exciting blaster fights, as opposed to armies of ninjas in composite chucking poison at each other. Failed. Smugglers smuggling, bounty hunters bounty hunting, creature handlers handling creatures. Failed. Exciting space battles. So-so... and implemented far too late into the development cycle.

    And this is not even discussing the incredible gameplay glitches, imbalances, and complete lack of content. None of this has to do with the Star Wars license, except the devs' poor decision about timeframe.