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RPG Devs Should Beware MMOGs
CVG is reporting on comments made by Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart. In an interview with the site, he points out that traditional PC RPG developers are in danger of permanently losing out to the developers of Massively Multiplayer Online Games. "He believes it's key that developers of non-MMO RPGs look closely at what the genre offers over MMORPGs to ensure the RPG genre doesn't lose out to the increasingly popular massively multiplayer online world. 'I think those of us that make non-MMO RPGs need to look at what a single-player/small multiplayer RPG can do that MMOs can't and spend our time and effort on those things', Urquhart said. "
The MMORPG and the RPG genre are completely different, one is for socialising with people in a vast world with only a backstory guiding them while the other is more oriented to dicovering a story by yourself....
The biggest advantage is the lack of 13 year olds whining and asking for help. Just focus on games targeted to mature gamers.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
After playing my first MMO, a non MMO seems rather "lonely" and "empty", and I am not even that social. I think that will be hard to overcome.
For me the biggest reason to play a single player/ small group games vs. an MMOG is that I can play in smaller bouts. It is a bit of a waste to play an MMOG for 20 minutes, yet it works OK to play 20 minutes at a time in a single player game. Two year olds tend to dictate when you can and can't play.
Bobo Mahoney
NWN2 and KotOR2?
I think it's key for Obsidian to develop games that don't have 50 bugs around every corner. I started the first act of NWN2 5 times, and they all ended up with corrupted save files after crashing, before I gave up on it. For KotOR2, I lost both my main save and my back up save to some weird bug.
Maybe they should worry about ironing out their bugs before they worry about competing with MMOs.
Single-Player RPG's have always excelled, and will always excel, at what they do: They tell stories.
Like books, before them.
I don't see any danger here to the RPG.
That said, it might be fun to read a book (play an RPG) with others some time, and if they made it possible in the game, that might be neat, if it worked out.
Perhaps you get cues, on what to say and act, but you do it in your own words, with language tips to the side, and briefings before-hand? (Like a computer-mediated LARP?) Could be neat.
Probably the first things Obsidian should worry about are: 1) Releasing products that are finished. Hi KOTOR2 2) Releasing products with an adequate amount of performance optimization. You shouldn't have to turn NWN 2 settings down to the point of making the game look 6 years old in order to make it playable.
'I think those of us that make non-MMO RPGs need to look at what a single-player/small multiplayer RPG can do that MMOs can't and spend our time and effort on those things', Urquhart said.
Granted it was a WHILE back that I looked for (S)mallMORPG, but I didn't find anything so I eventually setup a MaNGOS server. Blizzard is missing out BIG TIME. If they were to release a version of WoW that was scaled for personal use, they would make a killing. I would have no problem paying $120.00+ US for something like that (PLUS a yearly fee for content updates). Obviously there are people out there that want / need the "massiveness" of the MMORPG, but there are others (like me) that just want to play the game. Granted I have kinda gotten into the aspect of developing the game (the database not the core), but at times it would be nice to just PLAY and know that things work, not have to hunt down why a particular quest is bugged.
For those that don't know MaNGOS is the Massive Network Game Object Server. It isn't being developed for any one client, it just HAPPENS to work with the World of Warcraft client. In addition to the MaNGOS core, you need a backend database that drives the world. There are several out there that are being actively developed, but I prefer SDB.
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Fearghus is a good person to be talking about this, since his Obsidian Studios is the developer of NWN2 and its upcoming expansion.
NWN and NWN2 are games designed with multiplayer in mind. The original spawned hundreds, if not thousands, of "persistent worlds", which were mini-MMOs. Some linked servers ended up supporting hundreds of simultaneous players, and individual popular servers handled 50-95 simultaneous users, often stopping only at the limit of the hardware and the engine (as an NWN PW developer, and experienced sysadmin, it seemed very much to me that the engine had some sort of O(n squared) cost associated with users; going from 1 to 35 would barely dent a server, but going 35 to 55 could bring the same server practically to its knees).
Imagine if WoW supported user mods. There could be an "official server" and any number of player servers. The people setting up a player server could allow a player joining there to import their character in from the official server (not the other way around, of course). The people on the player servers would start with a base world, but have tools to add, remove, and modify the content. Add in a scripting language and a way to distribute customized art assets (models, animations, etc), and you have something like Quake 3 w/autodownload, but applied to an RPG instead of an FPS.
Bioware began to hook into another possibility when they started offering their "digital distribution" modules for NWN. For some small amount ($4-$12 depending on the module), you got an add-on game experience for NWN; a sort of new official campaign to play through. Imagine if a game like NWN or NWN2 had an "NWN live" service you could subscribe to. You pay $8 a month or something, and it gives you access to some cooler online features, as well as content updates. New models, new portraits, new adventures, etc. Bioware seemed to indicate they were pleasantly surprised with the reception of DD modules for NWN1.
One of the things about NWN and its expansions was that each expansion featured a bunch of new things (new classes, support for prestige classes, new models, new spells, new voices, new vfx and sfx). These were featured in a new official campaign adventure - one you could play through - but they were also remixable into a lot of new user adventures, and also could be combined with custom content for more possibilities. And a nice toolset to tie it all together.
A game that was gorgeous and easy to use and fun like City of Heroes could have reached its true potential with a scripting language and a toolset and a way to use that end-user content, because hobby content creators would have come up with enough refreshing content to avoid the "gets dull" label CoH earned for its repetitive missions.
Never ending trips into UBRS, LBRS, MC, BL, Strat, Scholo, ZG, etc. does not equate to never-ending opportunities for character advancement and development.
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Without those things it hardly felt like any kind of immersive story-telling experience at all.
Oblivion barely qualifies as an RPG. The skills and armor sets were drastically reduced from Morrowind, and the combat was morphed into a Quake-like first-person twitchfest rather than a stat-based combat system. Classes don't matter, because you can do anything anyway. You can be the Arena Champion as a level 1 warrior, and then join the Mage's Guild and work your way to the top without ever actually using magic. The world and most of its quests (especially the main quest) are totally bland and meaningless.
It's endemic of the "next-gen" hype that leads to budgets spent on crap like SpeedTree and FaceGen rather than making the fucking game.
"Sufferin' succotash."