Forthcoming MMORPGs

-pms-mistletoe writes "Just in time for E3, Joystiq is taking a look at all the MMORPGs currently in development, giving a rundown of each one and an overview. From the article: 'Massively multiplayer online games, known by a series of acronyms beginning with MMO, are a rising trend among developers. With monthly fees meaning regular income, and a player base too addicted to stop, developers trip over themselves to enter this lucrative market."

Comments

Hello Kitty

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello Kitty RPG?
All i have to say is:
What the flippin fuc&?!?!

Why would I try most of these?

[jandrese]

How many Swords and Sorcery MMOs are on that list? Does the term "also ran" not mean anything to these people?

I was also hoping to see more MMOs that deviate from the "beat up critters for loot, turn that loot into equiptment, chat if you like, it's your money" model. Sadly, that doesn't appear to be the case for most of the ones listed. It's like the RTS genre and FPS genres all over again. One or two companies make a really good game in the mold and suddenly dozens of copycats pop up in the hopes of cashing in, usually with inferior games.

Re:Why would I try most of these?

[Winterblink]

I think really what it boils down to is that fantasy games are a total no-brainer to design for, from the developer's perspective.

Classes are known and easy to do artwork and abilities for (mages cast stuff and wear cloaks, fighters wear armor and swing swords, etc.). The good vs evil thing makes it easy to come up with a basic plot. There's a ton of other games out there that have been successful and unsuccessful, so you've got a great big pool of ideas to either be inspired by or avoid.

All of this is instantly recognizable to the gamer, so the games are approachable more than a more unconventional MMO. Thus it's thought of as sure money.

Just my opinion of course, I've seen so many of these games come and go as cookie-cutter versions of the ones before that I'm numb to it all now. The only one that even looks appealing to me at all coming down the pipe is Vanguard, and then mostly because it's original EQ guys working on it.

Not much variety.

[hal2814]

"Many of the games in development look similar at a first glance, and developers will have to make their product unique and appealing."

Well said. It still looks like the world of MMORPG is still 90% dungeons, dragons, and monsters. I will at least be looking forward to the new Phantasy Star and Star Trek offerings though. I'm also interested in Fallen Earth. Maybe some of these competing MMOs can price war each other down to a reasonable monthly fee.

Damn costs

[thebdj]

I currently am debating whether or not to renew my WoW account. If this weren't bad enough, I am waiting for ST: Online and the LotR game doesn't sound too bad either. But monthly costs are going to hurt if I wind up playing 3 MMOs (assuming I could find the time after work). I really think it wouldn't be too crazy to ask for a time based payment system for MMOs.

Seriously, give me like $5-$10 fee a month for a set number of hours. If the model is setup reasonably well you can get people who are willing to play enough to warrant the smaller fee to pay while still having your die-hard full-time, unlimited subscribers.

This could even help draw more money to companies running multiple MMOs. In the end, I guess I will just have to decide which one or two MMOs to go with. It will probably wind up being WoW and ST:Online, unless of course the ST universe is screwed up as much as the SW one was with Galaxies.

Please, No More...

[TooMuchEspressoGuy]

Is anyone else fed up with all of the MMO-hype?

I recently came off of a year-and-a-half-long WoW-kick and bought a PS2. Since then, I've rediscovered exactly how fun that games with actual gameplay, storylines, and dynamic worlds can be. No MMO to date has had even two out of these three things (the gameplay is usually "push certain keys at certain times, and then wait for your enemy to die"; the storylines are non-existant; and the few MMO's with dynamic worlds, like Shadowbane, have been buggy commercial failures.) Yet they keep coming out, and gamers keep buying them. Why?

But what's even sadder is that all of the trends in gaming point to MMO's being the future. Maybe I'll be one of the few dinosaurs many years from now bemoaning the "good old days" when the majority of games were tailored to be fun, rather than "massive" and "multiplayer."

Re:Please, No More...

[Eideewt]

I'm also fed up with it. I can't get into the "treadmill" style RPGs in the first place, and I've never seen how adding more people makes them more fun. The last RPG I enjoyed was Fallout, which I hear is a common story. Maybe I'll get around to Fallout 2 sometime.

I still like the idea of a MMOG though. I just wish there were some that weren't dull RPGs, and that didn't require such a huge time investment. I'd like to see a Privateer style MMOG, for example. I've been wanting that ever since I first played it. That game was perfect for a MMOG; all it lacked was the actual MM and the O.

I wonder how much harder it is to keep thousands of clients in sync when you're trying to simulate fast-moving stuff like gunfire and space ships though. That may be part of the reason that RPGs predominate (along with extreme risk-averseness on the part of the publishers).

When you find something that works...

[RumGunner]

You can usually count on people beating it into the ground.

/drool

[Joe the Lesser]

must...level to max...on all possible mmorpgs....can not resist....the wonderful grind....cause i hate the real world....

stuff I'd like to see

[snuf23]

I could go on and on about game mechanics I'd like to see implemented in MMOs - some realistic, some pie in the sky but that would ramble on forever.
Some areas I would like to see improvement:

More meaningful PVP. Definately a hard one. Turbine looks like they might pull it off with Warhammer (building on DAOC's realm vs realm).

Improved Guilds. I think EQ2 has made some strides with guild leveling and status rewards as well as the recently released (and still somewhat broken) guild recruitment screen. If guilds need systems like DKP, there should be methods in game to easily track it.

Less need to repeat dungeons/instances. Sure I enjoy running a dungeon zone 2 or 3 times maybe even 5, but 20+? Hell no! WoW's run this zone 20 times to get an item so I can run the next zone 20 times to get an item ad infinitum approach to the end game leaves a lot to be desired.

Someone please get NPC faction right. I haven't played a game that does it well. Kill 900 million Furbolgs to get faction so I can buy a recipe. No thanks.

Rethink the combat. A lot of MMOs use a very conventional breakdown of class roles in combat. Fantasy, sci-fi and superheroes all implementing the standard class rolls of tank, melee dps, ranged dps, healer, buff and crowd control. I actually enjoy this structure (well hell I must or else I wouldn't play MMOs) but I'm sure there are other takes on MMO combat that could work well.

Better quests or at least more variety. EQ2 has a few quests that involve puzzle solving that are pretty neat. There has to be more than just kill X number, fedex, find the clicky item or kill X to get a drop. I realize these are done so often because they are easy to implement. Obviously puzzle quests or quests with scripted encounters take more time to develop.

In terms of straight up genres here's some stuff I'd like to see:

A Sci-fi MMO done right. Oddly enough SWG is probably the best mix of space ships and ground action except for the fact that it is so broken. Eve is great but I want to be able to land on planets and walk through alien cities.

I'll second the call for a Fall out style post-apocalyptic MMO. Auto Assault is neat, but once again I want to be able to get in and out of my vehicle in the main world. I'm looking for something that evokes the sense of loss of civilization in the same way as Charleton Heston screaming at the Statue of Liberty in the end of Planet of the Apes. I really believe a setting can be emotionally moving and still involve weird mutants that eat only human flesh.

A genre mashup like Shadowrun or the old roleplaying game Torg would be cool. Even something like the Chronicles of Amber.

An MMO where exploration and colonization are the focus. It would be cool to do a "new world" type of MMO where you could actually carve player cities out of the wilderness. Doing colonial imperialism in the historical sense might not be politically correct, but sci-fi colonization of a new planet could be. And if they added in methods to contact and cooperate with natives rather than just slaughter them that could be cool. The colony could start out in the least hostile part of the planet and as it "leveled" could expand to the more hostile reaches. Implementing things like terraforming would be difficult, but if someone could pull it off it would add a whole new dimension to the game.

A non-kiddie non-Disney cartoon MMO. Something like the pen and paper game Toon. Wild flexibility in character creation ala City of Heroes. Bizarro cartoon physics. Not anime, but more Warner Brothers meets Cool World with all of that over the top cartoon violence. Quests could involve vignettes playing on the recurring themes in cartoon shorts.

Just a few thoughts off the top of my head.

It's nice to see that we'll be getting Pirates based MMOs and Africa as well. I don't know how successful they will be but at least it's something different.