Are MMOs Time-Release Vaporware?

KKnDz0r writes "Australian technology and gaming site 'Atomic' raises an interesting question about the dangers of MMOs that go bust. Are they part of a new breed of games that render themselves completely useless and without value if the parent company goes belly-up? It certainly seems that way in some cases, with Fury and now Hellgate: London both going to software heaven, leaving a player base holding relatively useless client software." While it's certainly not an issue for the large, continuously successful MMOs, we've lately seen a huge influx of companies trying to grab a slice of the MMO pie, some of which will inevitably fail. It would be great to see a dying company at least open up the server software, but how can we give them incentive to do so?

Comments

Example: Age of Conan

[Anonymous Coward]

See Funcom's stock here. Can you tell when AoC was released by just looking at it?

Incentive?

[Bieeanda]

It would be great to see a dying company at least open up the server software, but how can we give them incentive to do so?

That's easy. Buy the code from them. If it's not already owned by a parent company, you can probably get it for fire-sale prices. Chances are that it's already legally the property of creditors though-- purchasing or even renting the servers necessary to launch an MMO is an extremely costly venture, let alone the costs of payroll and development.

Re:Incentive?

[WK2]

Or, we gamers could never pay for something that depends on the goodwill of the manufacturer to function. Buy Software? Sure. Rent services such as MMOs? Sure. But I don't understand why anyone would buy software that requires a service to function. This seems like a case of had it coming.

Re:Incentive?

[SL Baur]

But I don't understand why anyone would buy software that requires a service to function. This seems like a case of had it coming.

I see the point. I also see the barrier of entry of incoming MMOs.

I bought DDO Online Stormreach[1] first. Got a one week trial first, then decided to "buy" it. Big mistake. I had ended up on a European server for the trial and the US copy of the game I had would not permit me to play on the original server. Geographical regioning sucks! Big time.

I got WoW at the same time I bought Stormreach and ended up never looking back. By the time I got their "WE WANT YOU BACK, SOLO NOOBIE STARTING QUESTS ARE MORE NUMEROUS NOW" it was too late.

Serious competition to WoW is tough and that's bad because competition is good for everyone.

[1] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was "in" a brief Microsoft Windows XP appreciation "class". And it was all Slashdot's fault anyway - most of the MS Windows fans here say they must use it because of games, so I decided to put that to the test.

Re:Incentive?

[trytoguess]

If a MMO goes down, what does the creditors gain by keeping the severside code secret? I mean like after the chance of the code being bought by another group goes down the drain. Is there still an economic rationale?

Re:Incentive?

[Bieeanda]

What you're describing is an issue of distribution-- the developer can't help it if the publisher insists on doling out regional rights, or throws other obstacles in the way of players looking to get into the game.

World of Warcraft is not something to be seriously competed against-- its multi-million subscriber base is a gigantic anomaly, in an industry where 250,000 subscribers is still a prodigious number. Buy-in for end-users is low enough that you can have simultaneously active subs on several games for under $50 USD per month, which is less than a lot of people pay for TV.

And while I don't care for Stormreach either, it certainly hasn't failed yet. Failures are actually extremely rare in the industry-- a bad game can last a very long time, if the publisher is determined to squeeze every dime they can out of the last few tens of thousands of subscribers that haven't moved on to something else. Even games that have failed spectacularly out of the gate (Anarchy Online, Age of Conan, or Vanguard, for example) can limp along for years, or rally behind tightened code and newly released expansion material.

Re:Incentive?

[cgenman]

I never understood paying for MMO software. So you pay 50 dollars, for the priviledge of paying 15 dollars a month?

Pick one way of charging, and stick with it. Either lower the barrier to entry and only have monthly fees, or lower the abandonment rate and only have up-front fees. But don't double dip.

*Note: I have played several MMO's at various points in my life.

Re:Incentive?

[trytoguess]

Oh wait, silly me. Release code for free, and your competitors (which includes open source) could create something that carves a significant piece of the MMO niche, and that's unacceptable unless you totally ditched that market.

Re:Incentive?

[LingNoi]

Creditors don't care about source code and IP when liquidating a company, they go for the fixed assets such as office furniture, the other stuff is not bothered with.

Re:Incentive?

[Artifakt]

I've had legal dealings roughly 30 times with people who are not the original creators, but own something 'IP'ish - either because they are the heirs of an estate, or because they got it in lieu of normal payment for debts. Over half those times, the new owners seemed to seriously overvalue the item, and by seriously, I mean thinking it was worth its weight in flawless blue white diamonds. Creditor/Debtor relationships seem to be a bit less skewed in this respect than estates, but it's still pretty common.
      If you look at the financial history of the great depression era, particularly with regard to magazine story and sheet music rights, there are huge chains of companies which got awarded assets upon their debtor's failures, and held out for way too much in turn, even as they were going bankrupt themselves. There are chains where the property was transferred by a court ordered bankruptcy times 25 times in a decade, which would mean the average case for them was a company ignoring all offers for a work even though they faced bankruptcy within, on average, less than five months. We know the offers happened, because the courts used that fact to evaluate how to split assets among multiple creditors equitably. Even if you believe we aren't currently in anything approaching a full scale depression, that still looks like a good model of what to expect today.
      There's a semi-fair chance that a receiver will realize that taking 5 cents on the dollar for the server code is better than any other deal they might get. But if not, expect them to set the price like the MMO is a sure fire World of Warcraft killer, plus some.

Re:Incentive?

[Trecares]

The initial cost pays for the software development costs. The monthly fee pays for ongoing development and server/network expenses which can be considerable. That's why it's there. Some software have low enough costs that it can be sold for a low price or even for free, with the catch being the monthly fee. Others will usually heavily discount the initial purchase cost after a while when they've recouped most or all of the cost. Companies do it all different ways. Some (Anarchy Online) even dont charge monthly fees to get people into the door, but if you want the perks of the expansions, you gotta ante up.

It's a sensible thing, and frankly, the monthly fee is much cheaper than anything else you could do to entertain oneself for a whole month.

Trecares

Re:Incentive?

[Anonymous Coward]

The monthly fee for an MMO is almost the monthly cost of my DSL. Screw that, I'll stick to single player and free to play online games.

If running servers costs them so much, why don't they make it decentralized? A P2P MMO could work.

Re:Incentive?

[strathmeyer]

Yeah, next thing you know people are going to have to both purchase an automobile AND pay for gas.

Re:Incentive?

[fractoid]

It's more a question of what use the car is once the only gas station in town closes up.

Re:Incentive?

[sortius_nod]

Eve only charges the first month's fee as your account activation after the 14 day trial. So there's at least one of them doing it.

LOTRO is 1 month free + activation for US$25, so not so bad. I just went with the founders club and never have to pay again for access.

Re:Incentive?

[thesandtiger]

You pay $50 because you're getting the game pretty much right when it comes out and you're paying to get it right away. If you waited a bit, you'd only pay $20 for the initial cost once the price for the client software goes down. Since almost all MMOs give you a "free" month when you buy the software, if you're willing to wait you're essentially paying $5 (assuming a $15/month fee) for the installation media and manuals.

Re:Incentive?

[servognome]

It's more a question of what use the car is once the only gas station in town closes up

There is a limited supply of oil, so eventually cars will be useless - Doesn't stop people from purchasing and enjoying them in the present.

Re:Incentive?

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be one of the things I like about Guild Wars, the lack of monthly fee.

Re:Incentive?

[Immostlyharmless]

Thats the way all the Nexon games work, and all of them are absolute hacker fests.....read the forums for any of their games, and you will see 75% of the posts on their forums are hacker issue related.

Re:Incentive?

[cgenman]

You could say the same thing about any ongoing endeavor. Verizon could sell network access at 100 dollars for build-out + 50 dollars a month upkeep. ESPN could charge 30 dollar development + 10 dollars per month for access to their content online. You don't see ISP's (successfully) charging 4 months worth of fees to cover their cost of building out their data centers, do you?

It's all how you recoup your initial and ongoing development expenses. Those should be together under the same heading! Unless a player can choose which software to buy, and who separately to recieve service from, keeping those costs separate only serves to keep the barrier to entry high.

BTW, Anarchy Online didn't drop the initial fee because they recouped, they did so because they realized that a high initial outlay as lock-in wasn't working, and that they needed a much more consumer-friendly entry point.

Re:Incentive?

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't mean it can't be done, it only means that Nexon isn't very good at what they do.

Re:Incentive?

[tepples]

If you waited a bit, you'd only pay $20 for the initial cost once the price for the client software goes down.

The point of the article is that if one waited a bit, the servers would stop running and the client software would become worth $0.

Re:Incentive?

[Retric]

I don't think freemium MMO's work. Hellgate London is an example where you could still play the game while off line. You could play online with some restrictions for free, or you could pay money for some minor improvements. Granted the game was buggy, but I even with a perfect game most people would have just played for free.

Re:Incentive?

[Chris Mattern]

Verizon could sell network access at 100 dollars for build-out + 50 dollars a month upkeep.

If you want a hookup at your house or business that hasn't already been built, then, yes, Verizon will charge you run the line out and install it. Won't be just a hundred bucks, either.

Re:Incentive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Over half those times, the new owners seemed to seriously overvalue the item, and by seriously, I mean thinking it was worth its weight in flawless blue white diamonds.

How many carats does intellectual property weigh? :p

Re:Incentive?

[Hatta]

It's a sensible thing, and frankly, the monthly fee is much cheaper than anything else you could do to entertain oneself for a whole month.

If you don't figure in the costs of not having a life, sure. What are those hours really worth?

Re:Incentive?

[schon]

next thing you know people are going to have to both purchase an automobile AND pay for gas

So, wait.. your car only runs on gas provided by your dealer? And when the dealer decides to no longer support it, your car stops working?

Re:Incentive?

[Bieeanda]

I definitely agree. It's quite similar to old-school shareware games, where you get the first 'episode' or chapter, or whatever for free, and have to shell out for each of the later ones in turn. Many people just stuck with the freebie, and played it over and over again.

Western 'Freemium' (I like that term) games these days seem to work on an Annoyware basis. Hellgate and Dungeon Runners both rely on a glut of subscriber-only equipment dropping for both subscribers and free-players, but Hellgate took it to a bizarre extreme by denying basic interface functionality to 'free' players when it was finally implemented.

It probably doesn't help that Hellgate's subscription system was tacked on in mid-development, forcing them to 'incentivize' basic functionality when it became clear that their promised monthly content releases weren't going to fly.

On the other hand, Anarchy Online has had some success with the 'freemium' system. The original, base game is free to play for a year, but its years' worth of accumulated, active subscribers are off in expansion-only regions, leaving the base game a ghost town. The encouragement to subscribe is mainly social, rather than technical.

Re:Incentive?

[Nicholas Evans]

No, what you describe is fine. It costs money to have a physical box produced and put on shelves. The first month is typically free when you buy the box.

What I get pissed off by is how they charge you to 'enable' multiple expansion packs for your account. Take, for example, WoW. If you wanted to play that, you would need to get WoW classic (~$20), the Burning Crusade (~$20, you won't use this much after you level 60 - 70), and Wrath of the Lich King (the new 'endgame' where most people will be spending their time when it launches in two weeks).

Seriously? Haven't you recouped your development costs on the first expansion yet? You're raising the barrier of entry by A LOT if you take your game from $40 upfront to $60 upfront ON TOP OF the $15/m.

Re:Incentive?

[Anonymous Coward]

The "barrier to entry" remains the same, or actually decreases as the base box drops in price. What's required to enter is World of Warcraft. Not The Burning Crusade, not Wrath of the Lich King. A new player needs nothing more than the first box to get full use out of the game. I wouldn't recommend any new player buy more than that anyway, how do they know they're even going to like the game?

Re:Incentive?

[Anonymous Coward]

They HAVE mostly recouped their development costs; the WoW + Burning Crusade + free month combo pack is $25 now. Consider that a month normally costs $15, and that means they're only charging $10 for the box and manual and discs - and some of that is the retailer's profit.

Re:Incentive?

[snuf23]

I paid $50 for WoW when it came out and I think $40 for BC when it was released. The prices have consistently dropped. I've seen the Battlechest (WoW + BC) on sale for $30. I think it's pretty likely that Blizz will release a combined WoW + BC for cheaper once Lich King has been out for awhile.
Most of the new players I've seen have purchased just the original game and waited until hitting 58 before getting BC. If you are a new player there is still a ton of content in the first 60 levels.

Re:Incentive?

[mabhatter654]

you miss that those who started out early paid $40 for the game, $40 for the expansion and $15 for all the months in between... And probably $50 for the next one, even though we've had an account the whole time.

Re:Incentive?

[Aereus]

If so many MMOs are failing WITH charging for the initial software, what are the market chances for an MMO that starts out that much more in the hole?

MMOs are an economy of scale -- the development costs are going to be similar whether you get 20k subscriptions or 2 million. If you spend $30-50million developing an MMO, by the time you pay for development costs people may have already moved on. Or you take so long paying for the initial game you can't afford to work on an expansion until after people have lost interest.

Re:Incentive?

[SL Baur]

And while I don't care for Stormreach either, it certainly hasn't failed yet.

I did not mean to imply that. I should have qualified my statement ("it was too late, for me.").

The graphics are nicer than WoW's. Is that Art Bell doing the voice overs? Sure sounds like him.

The barriers of initial leveling (you can't get into some place interesting like the Market Place without grouping for the boring Waterworks quests) were just too painful for me to do twice, so I gave up.

Re:Incentive?

[Minwee]

The First Rule of Acquisition isn't just some made up idea from Science Fiction, you know.

Re:Incentive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we please stop modding these posts up? It's been over 10 years since this business model has been viable and popular. Get over it.

You may as well complain about paying for cable when ads are shown. We get it already. You don't like "paying for the same thing twice".

Go complain to the game companies. I'm tired of reading this post every time an MMO article comes up.

Re:Incentive?

[roketscintist]

That was very interesting. Not a lawyer my ass.

I think...

[BJH]

...I should point out that Hellgate: London was not actually an MMORPG, and it includes a single-player mode so it can indeed be played even if the servers are no longer available.

Re:I think...

[Anonymous Coward]

I just feel bad for the poor schmucks that paid for a founder account when the game lasted a little over a year.

Re:I think...

[Rennt]

Well, that was pointed out quite nicely in the article, but I suppose nobody read it did they?

Of course Hellgate: Londonâ(TM)s story is a little different to Fury in that the game can still be played offline, but the heart of Hellgate was always the online play and grouping with other players, so mentioning the offline component as a boon is akin to claiming itâ(TM)s okay that your Bugatti Veyron 16.4 got torched because the CD player still works fine

BTW, what is it with /. and the rendering of apostrophes? Is it just me, or Firefox, or what?

Re:I think...

[Anonymous Coward]

Single-player isn't everything, though. Phantasy Star Universe, for example, has a *lot* of additional content that's only accessible online - up to entire classes of weapons. It's honestly not a lot in the full swing of things but I still feel bummed about it.

Re:I think...

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh also the new IP holder has indicated there will be a relaunch in Feb 2009 - so the game is not dead.

Re:I think...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but let's also point out that
      1. Single player was not patched up to the same level as online play. So no shared stash, etc.
      2. There is content that you ONLY GET if you were a subscriber and can play online, plus there were some special items when the game launched that you can only have online.

Not that the company didn't deserve this failure, they knew it was a failure before launch and kept pressing forward because "we had to".

Re:I think...

[garylian]

At least a few people get this very important fact. I hate that HG:L keeps getting lumped in with MMOs and pointed at as a story about how MMOs fail.

HG:L didn't allow LANs to prevent piracy. Diablo II was pirated out the ass, and all it took was making a few copies of an original disc and viola, LAN parties. It was great for college students. And since the HG:L crew came from the Diablo II world, they knew that.

They just picked a total cluster-frak way of trying to deal with it, and then making it a subscription service to get anything decent.

Yeah, I bought the game, but I had no intention of playing it via subscription. The wife and I duo'ed a bit as non-subscribers, but it was a fairly poor experience, and we quickly went back to a real MMO.

Well considering...

[Anonymous Coward]

I never even heard of Fury before the announcement that it was going under, so why should I be surprised that it failed?

Re:Well considering...

[Goldberg's Pants]

At the store across the street, they're selling multiple copies of a particular MMO title that shutdown in 2007. Of course there's no indication on the box about this. No, it just says "First month of play free!"

It's only a few bucks. Not sure whether it's an actual deliberate ploy by the store to shift unwanted stock, or they simply just don't know it's shutdown.

Re:Well considering...

[Anonymous Coward]

i wonder if the store will end up in leagal doodoo over this?

Answer:

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

horrible idea

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a terrible idea, if every MMO that went bust released their server source code it would flood the market with decent MMO. How could anyone run a profitable MMO business if there were dozens of free MMO with the amazing features and graphics.

If it weren't for healthy capitalist competition you would be stuck with maple stories, last chaoses and rohans, *yawn*.

For example, Aion which comes out this fall has raised the bar again with 3D combat while in mid-flight and absolutely stunning graphics. I can't wait.

Great video of some of the action and graphics:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh8qsFrquKc

Open source hasn't produced any quality games of this caliber, and the truth is it never can. You want someone to do all the hard work for you, and just hand it over so you can tweak it. You're a bunch of lazy whining tweakers.

If you want to make a respectably advanced open source game. You're going to have to do a lot of work from scratch to make a beautiful game and find amazing artists willing to work extremely hard for no compensation. I'm sorry, but it isn't going to happen.

An Impossible Expectation

[Revotron]

When World of Warcraft bites the dust, you'll have a whole hell of a lot of people with 10gigs of data on their drives that does seemingly nothing. Thankfully, when that happens, it's a simple matter for the 11-million-some subscribers to switch over to a private server.

However, for fans of smaller, less popular MMOs, they're essentially screwed if their provider shuts down and nobody's reverse-engineered the server software.

I think it would be a good publicity stunt for the software companies if, when they shut down an MMO, they release the server software for private use. They don't necessarily have to open-source it since their own proprietary code might be re-used in future projects, but if they at least gave the die-hard fans a way to keep enjoying the game, they could build up an even more loyal following rather quickly.

Re:An Impossible Expectation

[SL Baur]

When World of Warcraft bites the dust, you'll have a whole hell of a lot of people with 10gigs of data on their drives that does seemingly nothing.

If it ever becomes time to `rm -rf World\ Of\ Warcraft', I will not be shedding a tear over the money I've spent on it. It is worth every penny/centavo. And most things become boring after awhile.

Why am I not playing qtnethack right now? Sigh.

Re:An Impossible Expectation

[Anonymous Coward]

When World of Warcraft bites the dust, you'll have a whole hell of a lot of people with 10gigs of data on their drives that does seemingly nothing.

By the time WoW dies, its players will have moved on to better MMOs. The last few holdouts can play together if they want, but it's more likely that they'll outgrow their obsession and find a new form of entertainment.

This article is not about WoW. It's about MMOs that might be really fun but not profitable enough to run for very long. In those cases, there is a real risk of entertainment value being lost because of a premature server shutdown.

I doubt that releasing the server software would help anyone very much. The user base would naturally dwindle, cheating would become commonplace, and latency would suck. Even die-hard fans would give up and play something else.

Re:An Impossible Expectation

[Goldberg's Pants]

Download the client. (Perfectly legal.) Download and run your own Mangos server. (Perfectly illegal.) Deprive Blizzard of money they don't need. I mean seriously NOBODY, ANYWHERE, needs to earn the $75+ million a month they make for their stupid little game.

WOW is a great game.... When it's free. For $15 a month it's a complete ripoff.

I can't remember if it was Will Wright or Sid Meier who said it, but one of those gaming legends said WOW was the best single player RPG they'd ever played.

Re:An Impossible Expectation

[murdocj]

WOW is a great game.... When it's free. For $15 a month it's a complete ripoff.

Utter bullshit. For $15/month WoW is probably the greatest entertainment bargain on the planet. Let's see... $15 gets you 2 movie tickets. Or a cheap dinner. Or you could rent a couple of videos. Any of which last a couple of hours.

Or it gets you a month of fun with friends. As much time as you care to spend online. Yeah, if you don't like the game, it isn't worth, but if you think is a "great game" then it's truly a bargain.

Re:An Impossible Expectation

[Goldberg's Pants]

To each their own my friend. I'd rather spend the money on a DVD. I'll get more enjoyment out of that than endless hours running around like a twat trying to find Murloc penises.

Re:An Impossible Expectation

[Goldberg's Pants]

Thanks. Nicely put. I prefer my own server.

No rude people asking you for money.
No people inviting you to parties constantly without asking you if you're interested.
No people throwing insults at you when you decline their multiple duel requests.
No people trying to scam you.
No people shouting racist/sexist crap.

And the list could go on and on.

It's nice being able to experience the content of the game without being surrounded by assholes. I mean seriously, all of the above happened on a daily basis.

Re:An Impossible Expectation

[fractoid]

No people to talk to. No people to party or raid with. No people to give a crap when you kill a boss or do something ingame. No people to PvP against. No reason to play.

The only thing setting ANY virtual world apart from single player RPGs is the people who inhabit it. Without them... it's all kinda pointless.

Re:An Impossible Expectation

[Goldberg's Pants]

I'll give you the raids, but if killing a boss is something you feel you need to be able to share with someone for some sort of validation as if you've actually achieved something of worth, note or merit...

Saying there's "no reason to play"... Yes, there's no reason to play the thousands of quests designed to be soloed in the game, or simply for the enjoyment of seeing everything you've paid for without paying constantly to do it.

God you hardcore MMORPG'ers are fucking scary!

Re:An Impossible Expectation

[fractoid]

Well, maybe you're different from me, but to me, the ultimate measure of worth of ANYTHING you do is mostly based on how it affects other people. Hell, I can cook the best pasta bake EVER, and maybe I'd feel good about eating it myself, but it's worth far more to me if my wife thinks it's delicious than if it's just me that does.

As for "thousands of solo quests", all quests I've seen in WoW fall into a very few basic categories. I reckon there are about 3 quests in all of vanilla WoW: "Kill X of Y", "Get me X of Y item [from mob Z]", "Go talk to X [and give them Y]". 99% of single-player WoW is monotonous as all hell - it's the people you play with that make it worthwhile.

It's interesting that you seem to equate valuing the community within you exist with being a hardcore MMO player. And it's the community that's real whether you're talking dragonslaying, Perl programming, rock-climbing, anything. What makes you think that anything at all has "worth, note or merit" beyond common consensus or individual valuation?

Re:An Impossible Expectation

[Anonymous Coward]

For $15/month you get 160 hours of entertainment. That sounds like a good deal to me.

Re:An Impossible Expectation

[Anonymous Coward]

You must have a lot of cash to be able to eat out and go to the movies each month.

Time to give up your career in fast food. Get a real job.

Re:An Impossible Expectation

[vrmlguy]

Download the client. (Perfectly legal.) Download and run your own Mangos server. (Perfectly illegal.) Deprive Blizzard of money they don't need. I mean seriously NOBODY, ANYWHERE, needs to earn the $75+ million a month they make for their stupid little game.

WOW is a great game.... When it's free. For $15 a month it's a complete ripoff.

I can't remember if it was Will Wright or Sid Meier who said it, but one of those gaming legends said WOW was the best single player RPG they'd ever played.

I'm not a WoW player, but from a straight financial perspective, $15/month is equivalent to a lump sum of $3,600. That seems like a large amount, but it's your complete budget for setting up your own server; don't forget to charge a reasonable rate for the time you spend doing it. And before you go hog wild on the hardware, remember that all future upgrades need to be paid for from that same initial fund.

(To estimate a reasonable rate for your time, take your annual income and divide by the number of hours you actually work in a year; call it 2,000 for simplicity. I'm a consultant, my number is roughly a quarter of my company's quoted rate but they have a lot of overhead to cover.)

Re:An Impossible Expectation

[Anonymous Coward]

Deprive Blizzard of money they don't need. I mean seriously NOBODY, ANYWHERE, needs to earn the $75+ million a month they make for their stupid little game.

I'm pretty certain that majority of people who play on private servers also play on Blizzard's servers. I'm sure there are a few that don't pay for it, but I doubt they'd pay even if there was no server.

I'm aslo sure Blizzard is aware of these servers, so why aren't they shutting them down?
They have used legal action before on what they've deemed illegal.

Re:An Impossible Expectation

[bonkeydcow]

Wow, way to pull numbers out of your ass! $15 = $3600? If you play for 20 years!!! The servers wont be up that long. The time value of money means you either 1) will have to pay a higher rate in the future or 2) will be paying effectively less over time (as the value of the $15 decreases.)

I'm sory if you live in Iraq or wherever and $15 dollars is a fortune to you. But honestly $15 is no big deal to most people. My 4 year old gets more than that as her allowance.

Re:An Impossible Expectation

[Skuld-Chan]

While "private" servers are nifty etc they really aren't remotely like the real thing.

I played with one and found so many bugs in encounters I knew quite well that I found it to be kind of a joke.

Re:An Impossible Expectation

[Anonymous Coward]

By the time WoW dies, its players will have moved on to better MMOs.

There are plenty of MMOs which are far superior to WoW, yet the players keep paying. Why? I don't know. WoW has the perfect blending of carebear play, kiddie graphics, and mindless grinding that lets people with zero skill think they're great players.

The last few holdouts can play together if they want, but it's more likely that they'll outgrow their obsession and find a new form of entertainment.

UO, EQ 1, and Meridian 59 are all still up and running. Not to mention smaller population games like Matrix Online or LotRO

Re:An Impossible Expectation

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets properly define this month of fun on wow.

Grinding levels to catch up with your friends - check

Grinding gold to buy a mount three different times?-
check

Grinding your crafting skills up?

check

Grinding your pvp rank?

check

All to EVENTUALLY get to the endgame, where you spend 4 hours in a dungeon to get your guild leader and his best buds their set pieces, before they move on and leave you to try to pub it constantly.

check.

I think you need to look up the definition of Fun

Re:An Impossible Expectation

[vrmlguy]

Wow, way to pull numbers out of your ass! $15 = $3600? If you play for 20 years!!! The servers wont be up that long. The time value of money means you either 1) will have to pay a higher rate in the future or 2) will be paying effectively less over time (as the value of the $15 decreases.)

I think that you misunderstood my position. My thinking was that if you start with $3600, you can withdraw $15/month forever, not just 20 years. As I said, I'm not a player, but it seems safe to assume that dedicated players will continue to play for the rest of their lives, and forever seems like a good first-order approximation to someone's lifetime. GP seems to feel that $15 is too much to spend for something that they could replicate at home. I was just pointing out a logical limit to how much they could spend and how easy it would be for them to break that limit. I think that $15 is a very fair price for someone who wants that experience; I don't.

Re:An Impossible Expectation

[murdocj]

As I said "if you like the game". Of course if you don't like it, no, it isn't worth it. The original poster said that it was a great game... if it was free. All I'm saying is that IF you think it's a great game, $15 is a great bargain.

Re:An Impossible Expectation

[Anonymous Coward]

There are of course, people who run private WOW servers apparently. A quick trip on Google would bring a few up most likely. I've seen private servers for games like the Korean MMO Ragnarok as well.

Put their code into escrow

[Anonymous Coward]

This is common in business to put their code into escrow so if they go belly up the end user isn't stuck with no support and no source.

In this case, in the event that the company shuts down the game code becomes open source.

Gamers could then buy insurance to fund a group to pick up the pieces and get the servers going again.

The should have made Anarchy Online 2 instead

[Vandil X]

The original AO had a great storyline & setting and had plenty to worth with for a sequel.

Also, Sci-Fi boobies are just as appealing as medieval ones.

Re:The should have made Anarchy Online 2 instead

[Kamokazi]

It doesn't matter what you release when it's as horribly unfinished as AoC.

I hung on a lot longer than many, because I love so many things about that game, the setting, the brutality, the fast-based combat (even though they nerfed the original design of the combo system), the open PvP, and I think it has some of the best-designed outdoor zones in any MMO. They are realistic but still interesting, and some of the vistas are amazing.

But the unbalanced classes, unfinished PvP system, unfinished mid-high level content, broken sieging, and bugs upon bugs are what killed it.

The Conan world has at least as good of a story as AO. That game had so much potential, but they made the mistake of many potentially great MMOs before them and launched too early. It may recover some, but they'll never get back the full 800k that bought the game initially...not even close.

what's the point?

[Ephemeriis]

I guess it might be nice if they open-sourced the software so that people could run their own servers... But I really have to kind of wonder what the point would be. What makes these games fun isn't the amazing engines or terrific game mechanics - its the players.

These days there's hardly any gopher servers out there (yes, I know there are a few) - so gopher clients aren't particularly useful.

Players move on to the newest, shiniest games out there. Without constant upgrades and expansions, players get bored pretty darn quick. And then your playerbase shrinks... There aren't enough people around to get groups or run raids... Which means less fun for the remaining players... And before too long there's nobody left to play with.

I suppose someone might pick up an open-sourced game server and expand/improve it enough to keep people playing... Might even do a good enough job to get people to pay for it... But I really have a hard time seeing any game living for terribly long after it's been abandoned by the original company.

I mean, there's a reason these games go under in the first place - they aren't making enough money because there aren't enough people playing them. Open sourcing the code might allow a few die-hard fans to keep playing... But the odds are pretty damn good the game will be dead (or close enough) before too long anyway.

And really, as an MMOG player myself, that doesn't bother me. Unlike a novel or a CD or something like that I don't feel that I'm purchasing an item when I buy an MMOG. I feel more like I'm joining a club... What I gain is the fun, experience, and memories of playing with other people. Not an item that I can revisit later on. It's like when you go on vacation to Mexico - what do you really have to show for your money when all is said and done? A few souvenirs maybe... Some photos... But the main thing you have are the memories of what you did.

Re:what's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike a novel or a CD or something like that I don't feel that I'm purchasing an item when I buy an MMOG. I feel more like I'm joining a club... What I gain is the fun, experience, and memories of playing with other people. Not an item that I can revisit later on. It's like when you go on vacation to Mexico - what do you really have to show for your money when all is said and done? A few souvenirs maybe... Some photos... But the main thing you have are the memories of what you did.

Exactly. Or if you take a trip to the US and then the economy goes tits-up when you get back, does that cheapen your vacation in any way?

When I purchase a game, I consider it entertainment. I don't expect to get entertainment out of it forever. However, I do expect to be able to use it for at least a couple of years. And I think MMOGs would be smart to let people know up front the game isn't going to last forever. It can't.

Re:what's the point?

[narcberry]

What makes these games fun isn't the amazing engines or terrific game mechanics - its the players.

So much for WoW being successful?

Re:what's the point?

[KefabiMe]

I just wanted to write about a counter-point. Ragnarok has lots of private servers, and it still has quite the player base. It also allows server operators to tweak the server settings so that players get to pick server settings that most suit their taste. Note: I play WoW, used to play Ragnarok, and have friends who still play it.

Re:what's the point?

[narcberry]

To the down modders,
WoW is successful due to it's amazing engine and smooth game mechanics. The biggest criticism is about it's mindless content and playerbase.

Re:what's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike a novel or a CD or something like that I don't feel that I'm purchasing an item when I buy an MMOG. I feel more like I'm joining a club...

Where I disagree with your analogy is how MMOG companies want to sell you the client subscription for $50 or whatever, on top of the monthly fee that actually makes the client useful.

It seems like it'd make a hell of a lot more sense for them not to charge for the client at all. I wouldn't feel at all ripped off if a game I played shut down if I hadn't sunk any money to "buy" the client.

I feel for those who buy lifetime subscriptions on games that go under. Although not too much--I personally wouldn't consider buying such a thing until the game actually has a track record. You might end up spending more in theory, but it's a lot better for peace of mind.

Re:what's the point?

[Cookie3]

>I really have a hard time seeing any game living for terribly long after it's been abandoned by the original company.

Like... Continuum? http://www.getcontinuum.com/
Or Gladiator? http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/gladiator/
Or ZZT? http://zzt.belsambar.net/

I would generally say that if the original developers/company _offers_ the game (and/or the source) for free with no support, players will freely support it themselves. A community will form around the players who support the game, and the game will live indefinitely. If the fanbase is technically knowledgeable in any way, you may even see patches to fix bugs and other dev tools come out -- particularly if the source is provided.

The problem, of course, is simply getting the game/source.

Re:what's the point?

[fractoid]

Sturgeon's Law applies to MMO players as strongly as it does anything else. 11 million players still means there are over 9 million crappy players.

And despite the moaning of everyone about WoW's playerbase, one of its biggest strengths is the fact that so many people play. MMOs benifit (or suffer) from extremely strong network effects. Try playing WoW on a very low-pop server, it's horrible unless all you want to do is solo quest. Switch to a high-pop server and the world comes so much more alive. Now if only they'd increase the server populations a little more... 2.5 - 3k concurrent at peak is only just starting to fill the world up.

Re:what's the point?

[GenP]

That just means Blizzard needs to man up and do away with shards.

Re:what's the point?

[VGPowerlord]

That just means Blizzard needs to man up and do away with shards.

They could stand to reduce the number of shards, but eliminating them is quite impossible with WoW's player-base size... that is, if you want to be able to do anything in capitol cities without your video card exploding.

Re:what's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you assume that an MMO game has to stay an MMO...I mean, one of the things that I hate about MMO's are all the other players (more specifically Spammers, "h4x0rs", the "hardcore" players, the "im g0nna pwnz ur azz lul!!!1" kids, etc). The only reason for me to play is with a group of friends. Being inclined to do so, I would rather set up my own, private server for my friends and myself. Being able to customize it makes it even better.

The beauty of open sourcing an MMO type game is that it no longer has to conform to the MMO business model. Sure, you will get a few people who set up actual MMO servers, but there will be even more people who will want to create their own private servers that they can tweak and play with friends.

actionable

[bigdavex]

We had the story recently about a court considering the "theft" of a virtual item.

If I have the Sword of Slaying Everything except Squid (which has some real-world value), and the company decides to cancel the project, can I sue successfully?

Disclaimers:

• I think that's absurd.
• Sword of . . (c) Steve Jackson Games

Re:actionable

[narcberry]

Well it would be nice for some legal precedent to be set. There is a lot of unknowns about who owns what. Many MMO creators even claim ownership over the software you bought. So you may walk out of a store with cd's, a box, manuals, and some flashy pin-up art, but you really only bought a license?

You may be told you won an in game prize for a contest, but actually the developer owns your prize? What are they claiming you won, exactly?

You may be given in game cash as an incentive to return to a game, but it's not really yours? Who are they giving it to?

Again, I eagerly await legal precedent on this.

Re:actionable

[DaveV1.0]

No, because the sword only has value as long as the MMORPG exists. As soon as the company closes up, the sword no longer exists. Also, the "contents" of the game don't actually belong to you (check the ULA). Through your subscription, you have a non-exclusive right to use the item.

The kids were able to be charged with theft because they used real world intimidation to take posession of something that had value on line.

Re:actionable

[Anonymous Coward]

If that sword were ever to fall into the hands of a cephalopod, it would all be over man.

On the other hand...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you want to play an MMO, though, with only a handful of people, or by yourself?
And every MMO has illegal servers somewhere, how come these people don't share the knowledge?
And even, even, even then, who really misses MMOs that are so crappy that they fail? There's plenty of crappy MMOs that are still online to play.

Re:On the other hand...

[Goldberg's Pants]

Just because a game is MMO doesn't mean it isn't a fun single player experience. The way I see it, it just provides life to the world.

To be honest, I enjoy WOW just as much on my own private server (if not more so because I can engage in shenanigans that would get me banned from the official version like visiting forbidden places etc...) then I had online.

Only part that does suck obviously is the trading side. I miss trawling the auction house for bargains. But really, that and raiding aside, it's ostensibly a lot of single player experiences happening at the same time. And the game punishes you if you party by lessening the experience you get for killing stuff, completing quests etc...

Re:On the other hand...

[devman]

actually, unless they changed it (it's been while since I've played) you actually receive an XP bonus when you are a party of 3 or more as a way of encouraging grouping. The total XP of the mob is divided among the party but then everyone gets bonus on top of it so a party of 3 is actually generating more net XP than those 3 individuals would be generating separately if they were killing at the same rate.

Add Auto Assault to the list

[grumpygrodyguy]

This same thing happened with Auto Assault. It was a unique and genuinely fun MMO. It was akin to Steve Jacksons Car Wars, something I'd been waiting for for years.

I bought this game, subscribed, and played it for about 4 months. Unfortunately the game had no longevity, was fundamentally flawed design-wise, and went 'belly up' in about 6 months. I've still got the box and the CD and the manual. It's really a shame this game didn't get fixed and stay afloat because I love the idea of an MMO like this.

Re:Add Auto Assault to the list

[Goldberg's Pants]

They're still selling multiple copies of that game in the store across the street from me. I pity the poor suckers who buy it.

Re:Add Auto Assault to the list

[Unending]

I have a copy that I got free from NCSoft I think a month before they shut it down
it had a decent mic/headphone combo with it so I guess I got about $10 worth of hardware for free at least

Not anything new, and not a big problem

[Scorpinox]

This isn't anything new, I remember "Fighting Legends" from about 7 years ago which went belly up when Maximum Charisma went bankrupt. It was a bummer for me at the time cus I sunk a lot of time into the game. I recall some rumors about a fan created server being made but I don't think anything came of that.

In general, I don't play a lot of games over and over again, and in the case of MMO's the gameplay is not usually something I enjoy a lot. I play MMO's for the people I play with, and if a game's failing, most those people are leaving already and that just encourages me to stop too.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

It's the new Gold Rush

[Trikenstein]

Only now it takes more skill to succeed

Re:It's the new Gold Rush

[bigpaperbag]

Only now it takes more skill POINTS to succeed

The proper usage of time-release (see tag)

[Anonymous Coward]

Why yes, MMO's use colloidal suspended pellets of vapour to gently provide a gamer with just the right amount of vapour all day long, so that he'll never feel anything but pleasantly moist.

I think the headlines mean to say "Are MMO's A Vapourware Time-Bomb?" "Time-release Vapourware" sounds like something the villain Moist (from Dr. Horrible) would employ.

Oh, and nice "question in a headline," dude. ;^)

Re:first?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

mmos are pointless imso (s=superior). but i dont really like pc games anways.

Not liking PC games kinda sucks the 's' out of your opinion.

greedy companies vs nice companies

[omfglearntoplay]

To me, it's all about how evil a company is. There is obviously no benefit to them hoarding information unless they are really going to reuse it somewhere else. Just give it up, and maybe you can at least still see people enjoy your game even if you had to move on to a new job. Why not?!

I see a lot of gaming companies trying to DRM their stuff. As much as i like halflife 2, portal, and team fortress 2... i just have that feeling that one day they aren't going to have steam and my games wont work anymore.

Re:greedy companies vs nice companies

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, most of those games already have steam workarounds, and at that point I don't think there would be much moral objections to using such an app.

Re:greedy companies vs nice companies

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that simple, I've been trying to get the source code to the game hardwar, but without knowing who the copyrights belong to it would be illegal for the CEO of the old company (who lives 30 minutes away from me) to give it to me. In fact if the owner showed up and he had GPL'd or handed out the code he could be taken to court.

The law firm that sold the assets of the company knows but they want £250 to look through their records and find out the information.

You also have to realise that not all code in owned by the company, there could be code from different games companies, libraries such as Havok, etc which makes open sourcing the game difficult.

I think how evil the company is has nothing to do with it at all.

With that being said you should contact and get in there quick before it hits the copyright blackhole (ownerless because no one knows who owns it). This happens to a lot of game source code.

Re:greedy companies vs nice companies

[DaveV1.0]

This is about not being able to use an MMORPG client when the game is shutdown, not about DRM. Your post is completely off topic.

Re:greedy companies vs nice companies

[Hatta]

Any game that requires a remote server under the control of a single third party has the same vulnerability. It's pretty much the same thing. And if you really think about it, these companies are using multiplayer as a form of DRM. I can copy WoW all I want, doesn't do me any good if I don't have an account.

It's already started

[Anonymous Coward]

The number of servers for Final Fantasy XI has been going down for the last few months. Players are being moved to the remaining servers.

What will happen once Square Enix decides to stop everything? I'm hoping they will release the server program and/or release the protocols so that people can make open-source versions of the server.

like proprietary service dependent hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how many electronics went to the landfill once the service they were used with went belly up? Oh well, at least you have a shiny coaster to go with your door stop.

We'll see that a lot more now

[Opportunist]

The development of MMOs shows that we'll soon see this happen a lot more often.

MMOs have turned into the love child of VCs. They see the success of WoW, see what kind of a huge cash cow it is, and of course they want a slice of that cake. We will see a lot of MMOs pop up left and right in the near future. Actually, we do already see that happen.

Now, early MMOs were mostly a kind of game for a rather small audience, and they were developed as such. EQ, UO, let's not talk about Meridian, they didn't really expect millions of subscribers. And because of this, they aimed lower and already considered the game successful if it managed to break even, which, in turn, wasn't so terribly hard to do with lower expectations (from the players), lower cost of development and the "new kinda game" smell all over it, covering the stench of tedium.

We're now in a post-WoW world. And players have seen it. Love it or hate it, WoW is, from a purely playability and long term interest point of view, very successful. The world is big. The graphics are nice. The quests are easy but managable. Boring from time to time, but never as boring as many others were in so many other MMOs. And most of all, the game is very open end. You can't have it all. Even if you play constantly, have no life outside of it.

Now try to recreate that. Your problem, as a developer, is twofold. Your prospective players will judge you by the "fun" they have in WoW. Your VCs will judge you by the revenue of WoW.

Can you compete with that?

To make matters worse, you have to be different from all those hundreds if not thousands of other MMOs that are pumped into the market. So you have to be "new" in some way. Do you think EQ could even get a foot into the door today? Let's even give it up to date graphics, do you think it could? By today's standards it's boring, it's static, it's limited.

So the bar gets higher and higher for new MMOs. The cost rises as well. VCs want their money back. And the share you can cut out of the cake gets smaller and smaller with more and more competition.

So we'll see a fair lot of "small" MMOs fold. Often within their first year. We'll have to watch subscriber numbers closer, and be prepared to jump ship in time when we notice the game fails. I mean, who wants to "waste" his time building a character that's gone soon?

Which bears the question, why don't we just play to have fun? I mean, like we used to? Aren't games meant to be, you know, fun?

Re:We'll see that a lot more now

[Anonymous Coward]

"Which bears the question, why don't we just play to have fun? I mean, like we used to? Aren't games meant to be, you know, fun?"

And this is precisely why i will never play another MMO, put multiple players into a game & it becomes a competition, fun goes out the window. Kudos to Bethesda for continuing to produce single-player RPGs while the rest of the industry goes dollar-signs-in-the-eyes gaga over 3D chatrooms.

Im so disappointed about Richard Garriott, the man finally gets a chance to do something without EA hanging over his head, & whats he do? Another damn MMO.

Re:We'll see that a lot more now

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also incredibly expensive to develop a MMO, much more so for a single player. When one really considers the art, models, environments, scripting, dungeons, etc. it is much more content than even something like Oblivion. The potential (in theory) for better returns are there. Investors, though I going to put on the heat when they shell out the millions required to properly develop a MMO.

Re:We'll see that a lot more now

[seventy8]

EQ had its foot in the door but then sold to a company that stripped it and changed the play rules then never sat still and changed rules constantly to compete with something that was not there... Only interested in subscriptions and not playability. EQ 1 was an outstanding game. then Sony Bought it and it went down hill rapidly. Then WoW came out so they made EQ2 which looked great but somehow was a time suck and a half. The original creators of EQ where Verant. they did it good. It was sold to Sony and it was carried forwards badly. Apparently now because of a fan base there are EQ1 severs up . They require emulators and because the game is no longer changed much or supported) only the "platinum" version works. You have to buy that and download an emulator. Apparently for an old game it has decent populations. Which is what MMOs are all about. WoW annoyed me form day 1, as I was not a fan I was always looking for a good adventure and dungeons and dragons type of game. I have been playing games since Wizardry on my ][2e. Was written in Pascal and was my gateway to leaning to code.

Re:We'll see that a lot more now

[Opportunist]

EQ ist still around because it needs little to no maintainance and is something Sony can sell as part of their ... whatever they call that "all games pass" subscriber fee that encompasses all the dead horses they've been beating around for a while now, from EQ1 to 2 to Vanguard to Matrix Online.

I'm also fairly sure that's one of the venues their "subscriber numbers" come from. I mean, think you're playing EQ (or some other game), ponder quitting, see another game of those train wrecks Sony bought and drove against the brick wall, consider... it's just 5 bucks more and you can play both those games, so why not... you get a few more char slots too that way...

Hey, I fell for it too. Took me 3 months that I get two games I don't want to play for the price of one and a half, and a few char slots I neither need nor want on top of it. Great deal, really.

Re:We'll see that a lot more now

[Opportunist]

Two things:

First, MMOs needn't be a competition. I play EvE. Mostly for myself. I'm in no competition, with no one. I interact with others, I buy and sell according to the market, I make some ISK by using the stupidity of other players against them, but I need neither have the biggest ship in the universe nor be the first to have some new equipment. I just play a game. I have a few ships that I use, I decide what I wanna do today, and generally it stays fun (with the tedium of scanning from time to time).

And second, Tabula Rasa, the MMO that Garriott decided to make, was good. It was new. No, really, it was something new. It had a lot of fresh ideas that dared to leave that old trampled path of the older MMOs. Sadly, the whole thing got butchered by the usual "release and milk" strategy. I have no idea why Garriott thought it would have to be. Did he sell it to some publisher who needed the money, did he think it was ready (I do sincerely hope he didn't or you can pretty much toss anything he'll make in the future without looking at it), I honestly don't know, but it was just another one of those "half a year too early" MMOs. A really brilliant idea mixed with a great story... and buggy quests and nothing to do when you hit the level cap. Quite frankly, a real shame, a gold mine idea thrown down the loo because some greedy idiot couldn't wait 'til it is finished.

Now the game is on the brink of shutting down, subscriber numbers are down past anything sensible (I left in June) and it is generally one of the few MMOs that we saw die, or will see die in the near future, that I am really honestly sad about. It had an incredible idea and a really wonderful story, something I sorely miss in many games, especially MMOs, today. It was new, fresh, interesting.

And killed by greed.

Re:We'll see that a lot more now

[Opportunist]

And that's the part I simply don't get. Yes, MMOs cost a lot. Many times more than what any single player game costs. And development takes a long time during which you don't see a penny from your investment. Quite the opposite, the closer you get to release, the more expensive the whole deal gets. Running a beta phase is costy.

So I can kinda understand that investors are crapping their pants over their investments and want to release as fast as possible. But usually that means killing off a game. WoW is successful because it was released when it was ready for release. Now, I don't say finished. WoW was anything but finished when it was released. It had bugs, it had issues, it had crashes and lag was sometimes really unbearable in highly populated spots. But it was ready. Most of it worked, the core skills worked (ok, kinda, but the most important ones did) and most of all there was something to do for top level players.

Quite a few very promising games failed because of these critical problems. What investors need to see is that people only keep paying as long as they can keep playing. Or rather, want to keep playing. And they usually only do if they see a reason to. Like, a game being fun or a game rewarding them. Later on, communities can pick up a lot of slack a game might develop, but communities don't start to play a role until a few months or even a year into the game. Certainly, sometimes whole clans/guilds/whatever move in from other games, but this is the exception rather than the rule.

When a game fails to deliver that because it was released too early, people will leave early. Also, people leaving will pull other people with them. That's when the community can work against you, when clan leaders (which isn't necessarily the guy sitting on top claiming to be the leader, it's much like in fashion or other trends with people dragging others along) decide to leave a game for a different one, more people may follow him out.

So what makes or breaks a MMO is whether it is ready for release at release. People who left you because the game wasn't ready will leave you, and they will not come back, they may drag their clan along to the next game and you're left with a pathetic subscriber number. Even if you manage to finally make the game good it will most likely not save you. You already lost your players. Reacquiring them usually isn't easy and can cost you a fair lot more than what it would have cost you to get the game ready for release in the first place before releasing it.

So basically, when a MMO with a good idea fails, blame the impatient beancounter, not the programmer.

Second Life

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a common fear for users of SecondLife, especially since Linden Lab likes to royally screw their customers occasionally.
Hopefully the Open Grid Protocol Linden Lab is developering will belay that fear

Tupperware keeps MMO's fresh.

[Ostracus]

"It would be great to see a dying company at least open up the server software, but how can we give them incentive to do so? "

Why would you want a game that by it's nature needs constant updates to be released? What's that you say? The community can release a constant stream of fresh and exciting content that will keep the people coming back for more. Wonderful. Type up a business plan. Oh wait.

Re:Tupperware keeps MMO's fresh.

[babyrat]

The community can release a constant stream of fresh and exciting content that will keep the people coming back for more. Wonderful.

I'm not usre if you are being sarcastic here - but apparently you are not aware of the MUD craze of the 90's. That is exactly what happened.

Why single out MMOS?

[Yaur]

isn't this a problem with the whole SaaS concept? At least with a game you don't lose anything that has "real" value.

Re:Why single out MMOS?

[Aphoxema]

Exactly, besides the years of 12.95 a month.

Re:first?

[Anonymous Coward]

Turns it into an 'h'... ...as in horrible.

shutdown != bankrupt

[Yaur]

Auto Assault is a case in point, and the servers could potentially be reused for another game... so they wouldn't want to give away the source. In the case of bankruptcy having the code in escrow is much worse for the investors (the ones who paid for the game to be made in the first place) and there is really no upside in doing it since consumers, by and large, don't care if the code is escrowed.

Correction

[Aphoxema]

"... companies trying to grab a slice of the MMO pie, all of which will inevitably fail."

There, I fixed it. Nothing lasts forever, anyone who invests their time in an MMO believing it will be around forever (yes, that does include WoW, you damn lunatics) is seriously illusioned.

If you get a pet, you should be prepared for it to die. If you get a car, you should be prepared to eventually give it up for another.

This isn't any different, trying to resuscitate a dead game is just humoring nostalgia.

Re:Correction

[LingNoi]

What rubbish, some of the first MMOs ever made, gemstone, Ultima Online, Meridian 59 (the first 3d mmo) are still going strong.

Everquest is almost 10 years old (1999) and that's still going strong.

Back up your baseless claims.

Re:Correction

[KingKiki217]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_thermodynamics#Second_law

Even if some things last for a long time, nothing ever lasts forever.

Re:Correction

[LingNoi]

Indeed, now if only we can get this point across to the global warming scaremongers.

Re:Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

This may be correct...

Your examples are the exception and not the norm. Further the MMO's you listed are far from going strong. They have a dwindling population, and the possibility of any sort of revival in the game is near impossible.

As an example look at AO. Where it had to resort to free accounts in order to maintain any sort of user base. Eve Online is another example where the game sits at a mare 30k-50k active user base.

As for some examples of dead MMOs:
Auto Assault
Asheron Call 2
Horizons
Fury (from article)
Hellgate London (from article)
Earth and Beyond
Motor City
Sims Online
Seed

You could also add Matrix Online to the list, however SOE is willing to maintain MMO's that lose user base and move no where. This includes:

Matrix Online
EQ/EQ2
SWG
FFXI

My point, that the article failed to see, is that the MMO's he listed failed, not because they were great games. However because they had awkward interface, clunky mechanics, and were never good games. Many developers shovel crap out the door, with the pretense that they will fix any deficiencies in their titles through patches. However when the game is crap, no one will stick on long enough, and feed in their quarters just in hopes of seeing the game take off. What made WoW work, as a classic example, was that when you sat down the game just worked. It felt simple, easy to learn, and didn't require a PhD in awkward interface operation.

Re:Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

Going ... strong ... ? Do you really think that 10,000 subscribers is going strong ? I played EQ back when and it was a lot of fun, but its a dead game that was replaced with WoW. Sure, I know people still playing EQ but come on ... its outdated technology and a snore compared to WoW. Its still alive but not what it used to be, not even close.

Re:Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the best example, but Jumpgate. I never played retail, but I played in the beta. It wasn't too successful out of the gate and apparantly the servers et al went back to the developers, who I guess have been running it, but it kind of just hobbles along.

It's kind of a silly argument to make though (that MMOs are "time-release vaporware", because a lot of players play because they have players to play with. As more people leave the game, the game itself becomes less and less fun. As the game becomes less fun, more people want to leave, and the situation gets worse. Ultimately, no one is playing and then the game vanishes, effectively hurting no one/a small number of people.

Also, for your consideration, look at Asheron's Call 2 (note: asheron's call 1 I think still exists)

Re:Correction

[Aphoxema]

Define strong.

Re:Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

You could also add Matrix Online to the list, however SOE is willing to maintain MMO's that lose user base and move no where. This includes:

Matrix Online
EQ/EQ2
SWG
FFXI

So, first you say that all MMOs will die, then you state that SOE is willing to maintain all their MMOs? Which is it? You've utterly defeated your own point.
Four things:
1) FFXI is not a SOE game. Square-Enix publishes and develops it. It also gets regular expansions and updates, including the recent 2008 collection bundle.
2) I don't play any SOE games, but I admire their long-term strategies. Any other multi-game publisher (*cough* NCSoft *cough*) would've dropped most of the SOE roster (MxO, PotBS, Vanguard, SWG), but Sony admirably holds on. Their multi-game pass subscription also seems like a great deal. I would feel more secure buying a new SOE game than one from any other publisher. And no, Blizzard doesn't even enter into this equation. They're a one trick pony, no matter how much you like WoW.
3) EverQuest just got a new expansion (its 15th). Lineage II did as well recently. Lineage also had another huge game update. Ultima Online is getting a new expansion in 2009. These are all 'dead' games by your (pathetically mistaken) estimation, but they all still have very active dev teams.
4) GemStone. Ultima Online. EverQuest. Meridian 59. Lineage. They are all still online.

Re:Correction

[blueg3]

Actually, in spite of the second law, some things can, in a sense, last forever.

One of the more entertaining information-theory problems in thermodynamics is demonstrating that a thinking entity is capable of an infinite number of thoughts, even though they have access to a finite amount of energy and are facing 2nd-law heat death.

Re:Correction

[LingNoi]

Making money, just because they're not in "hot awesome games" magazine doesn't mean they're dead. That is infact the problem with the games industry..

"we gotta have wow hotness" the game developers say. So they don't look at their customer base, spend all their time being cowboys on gamespy and then wonder why they don't make any money.

Re:Correction

[Aphoxema]

Since EQ, which was released when most people still had 56k, disk space, bandwidth, and processing power have reduced in cost considerably.

If none of these had become less expensive over time, do you think EQ would still be as popular as it is?

Everquest still does exist, it's still coming out with expansions, and it's impressive that it still may be making money, but it won't forever.

How long do you think EQ will keep making money, getting subscribers, giving SOE enough incentive to keep the servers up? 5 years? 10 years? 100 years? 1000 years?

It will get shut down, eventually, one day, and surely in less than the lifetime of the average human being.

Re:Correction

[GrayNimic]

You could also add Matrix Online to the list, however SOE is willing to maintain MMO's that lose user base and move no where. This includes: Matrix Online EQ/EQ2 SWG FFXI

EQ2 has actually had its subscriber numbers going up with the last two expansions, a rarity for a game of its age.

Either "lose user base and move no where" == "increase subscriptions" in your language, or someone's just making wild accusations.
(plus, as others have pointed out, FFXI isn't an SOE game)

Re:Correction

[Techman83]

Hell, even some of the old Muds are still going, small user base now days, but still ticking along! necromium.com

Re:Correction

[DrSlinky]

I'm currently a subscriber to Gemstone (IV), and I'll debate that claim. Gemstone is still going, but calling it "strong" is a bit of a stretch. We recently had the Ebon's Gate event, and the online player count never even broke 700 while I was watching. 10 years ago, the player count was almost never under 1k. 14 years ago, during the AOL/Prodigy/etc. days, 1.5-2k was the norm. Gemstone is dieing a slow, bleeding death. It's being kept alive by a small community of dedicated players (many of whom 'multi-account'), and is being developed by volunteers.

Re:Correction

[SupremoMan]

I would say EQ2 is not a bad game. Better than most games I ever tried. It's just not my cup of tea. Seems too carebearish :)

Be wise.

[SupremoMan]

Don't buy into every MMO out there, do your research first. Only MMO I ever bought on release was WoW. And that was cause I knew it was gonna run, and it wasn't going under. Other than that I tend to wait to make sure the game is worth it. I end up buying most of the games I was mildly interested in at the bargain bin for few bucks, and I play them for a free-month just for kicks. I played Tabula Rasa for $15, and EQ 2 for $3. Hell I even stuck around in EQ2 for 3 months or so on the PvP server. I felt good about both purchases.

Re:Be wise.

[derfy]

Second this. I bought WAR a few weeks ago and found out I hated it. Just couldn't get into it. Go go wasting 50 bucks!

Re:Be wise.

[Anonymous Coward]

And another carebear crawls its way back to WoW.

WAR was never marketed at people who want easy mode everything.

WoW is the FOX News of MMOs: loud, obnoxious, and meant for people with all the intellectual powress of a retarded third grader.

Re:Be wise.

[log0n]

Tabula Rasa wasn't worth the $4.98 + free month I bought it for on clearance at Target.

Alone In The Dark (new one) for $7.98 on the other hand... great game.

Re:Be wise.

[derfy]

Poor troll is poor. I quit WoW, too. Too boring.

Poor schmucks like me :(

[BJH]

But hey, it was fun for a few months there. A ripoff, but fun.

Uru: Ages Beyond Myst....

[carterhawk001]

This is an MMO that beta'd, died, came back with fan run and company verified servers, died again, came back under gametap, died yet again, and now maybe might come back with fan servers a second time.

At this point I doubt Cyan even owns Myst, Uru, or Plasma, the engine they bought and built up. I don't see any future where the fan's will get source code to the servers, or even the ability to run a server free of Cyan's control. Any company going belly up after investing millions obviously hasn't recouped that money, meaning the people that invested in them now own the IP, and why would they give it away? I doubt *they* give a rats ass about the fanbase.

You might be saying to yourself that Uru is still a single player game, and yes, this is true, but that isn't what URU is about, it's about the community. I've played all the myst games, and this one feels the most dead of them all, because you are alone in a world meant to be filled with other player characters.

There should be an aggregator

[Pearson]

I'm sure there is stupidity and greed standing in the way, but the obvious fix for this is to have one company acquire all of the failed games.

I know SOE has done this with several games (the Matrix, particularly) and is able to turn a profit even on very low subscription numbers because they already have all the infrastructure in place for their other games. The aggregator company could also gain leverage by selling access to multiple games for one price. For example, any two games for only $10/month, or all 10 games for only $20/month. You might keep a sub like that going all the time just so you have the convenience of playing a few hours of Auto Assault or Hellgate whenever you felt like it.

Re:There should be an aggregator

[VGPowerlord]

The aggregator company could also gain leverage by selling access to multiple games for one price.

Sort of like... SOE's Station Access?

Make it illegal

[Karem Lore]

Hey, If the software publishers are able to push questionable DRM onto my personal machine after buying a game (or a license to use) it should be illegal for the said publisher to stop providing the services for using the game unless a refund or rebate is given. Either that or clients are given free and only monthly charges occur! You pay while you play. Actually buying a client that then gets "switched off" effectively means you are purchasing a temporary game. Karem

Re:Make it illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

The law would not help at at all. If the company goes bankrupt, you won't get any money back.

If the company does not go bankrupt, it will if it has to pay back the money.

Re:Make it illegal

[DaveV1.0]

Your comment is off topic. This is about MMORPGs and the companies that run them going out of business, and has nothing to do with DRM.

not vaporware, it's abandonware

[scotsghost]

And you people claim to be geeks. Here's the crux: Vaporware gets announced, but never released. Abandonware gets released and then abandoned.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware

Re:not vaporware, it's abandonware

[Aklyon]

you are correct about that. but what about MMOs that are free to play, like AdventureQuest Worlds http://aq.com/? (its only been 'live' for a month, but you don't have to pay to play all of it. but how did they make an MMO completly in Flash?)

Re:not vaporware, it's abandonware

[scotsghost]

it's live, so it's not vaporware. even tho it's not a 1.0 version -- it's currently in "gamma" at v0.40 -- it'd be abandonware if they dropped it now.

but how did they make an MMO completly in Flash?

after a week of playing it (which i should really thank you for, with a baseball bat, repeatedly), i know the answer to this question: BADLY.

eq

[Anonymous Coward]

i started on eq1, and i never moved to WoW because the graphic looked so cheezy. When eq2 came out, it looked great. And now that WoW is advertising, i still have no need to move. It still looks so cartoonish in comparison. eq2 is great, I see no problems with the gameplay at all. Granted, if you are oldschool hardcore, you level way to fast, but i guess thats the allure these days. Plenty of fun to be had, and the game has been going for quite some time, so old continents are available (you'd think that would bring oldschool players back) and overall, i can have a good time if i only have 30 minutes to play or 4 hours.

Asherons Call 2 ??

[Anonymous Coward]

Turbine slapped its fans in the face by abandoning AC2 in favor of Lord of the Rings.

Of course no one would turn away a cash cow like LotR, but Turbine owes the AC fans a debt.

An activation fee

[tepples]

Verizon could sell network access at 100 dollars for build-out + 50 dollars a month upkeep

I believe it's called an "activation fee", and plenty of wireless carriers charge it.

Re:An activation fee

[Anonymous Coward]

I've changed houses quite a bit, and I have to say as far as I can tell the "Activation Fee" exists only to be dramatically waived for new customers, and to eek out an extra bump of cash from current customers who get behind in their payments.

So it's OK to hurry our deaths along?

[Anonymous Coward]

If so, pop over here and I'll quicken your passing.

The investors

[Anonymous Coward]

They already got their money back if it made a profit.

If it didn't, they've already lost most of their money and the "value" of the code is nearly nil, so selling it on brings little new money and costs to ensure it is sold (so you could have negative value).

Unclear on the concept.

[DaveV1.0]

One goes out and buys specialized client software to access a service. One pays a monthly fee for the service. One uses the software to access the service. The service goes away. The software has no more use.

Where is the poblem? Go out and buy the client software for some other service if you really want that service.

Here, let me give you a real world comparison.

One goes out and buys a membership card to an exclusive club which allows entry without paying a cover charge. One pays a monthly fee to maintain one's membership. The club closes. The card no long has a use.

Here, have another:

One goes out and buys a membership card to gym which allows entry without paying a fee every time one wants to work out. One pays a monthly fee to maintain one's membership. The club closes. The card no long has a use.

Exactly what is it people are complaining about? Is it that the specialized client software they "bought" doesn't work with every other MMORPG? Or, are they just whining that they can't play the game anymore? I ask because the game is not the client. The game is the service run by the company. No company, no service, no game.

Should people who paid for a CompuServe client and subscription bitch and moan because they now can't use the software they bought?

To anyone who is whining about not being able to use the client for that MMORPG that folded, pay attention:

You bought software and got use out of it. You used it for what it was intended. You played the game. You had fun. But the company didn't make enough money to stay in business and now the game is over. The end. You were not cheated. They did nothing wrong. These things happen. Grow up, get over it, and get a life.

Re:Unclear on the concept.

[carterhawk001]

Then none of the MMO companies should charge for expansions or updates, that's like having to pay double to keep using your gym membership. City of Heroes has never charged for an expansion to the game, and even when they released City of Villains (seperate game), they rolled it into your City of Heroes subscription, two games, once price. And still, both games are under active development and the players don't have to pay extra for new content, unlike a certain ogre loving mmo we all know.

Re:Unclear on the concept.

[Anonymous Coward]

One goes out and buys a membership card to gym which allows entry without paying a fee every time one wants to work out. One pays a monthly fee to maintain one's membership. The club closes. The card no long has a use.

Most MMO's make you pay for the client AND the service. If I was just paying for the service (either in the form of a monthly or one time client fee), I might be angry, but oh well. However I payed for the client and the monthly fees for the service. When I buy a game, I want to be able to play it for years. I have games from 1994 that I still play and enjoy. The client is mine, if the company goes belly-up, I still want to play the software that I bought.

How about a Car analogy. A car is a client and the roads is the service. If I buy the car and am given the use of the roads for free, and the road is suddenly closed, I may be mad, but I knew that the car was tied to the roads. If I am given the car but have to pay for the use of the roads, and the roads are later closed, again, Paying only for the service. That is not how it works in most instances. I paid for my car, I pay for the roads (in the form of taxes). If the roads were suddenly closed, I would be really mad since I paid for the service and the car. I am now even more mad that I can't create my own roads or use someone else's roads.

Re:Unclear on the concept.

[SupremoMan]

I agree. Most mmos have no right to charge for expansions! The more subscribers you have the lower percentage of your income is needed for content updates. In case of WoW it's fair to say that keeping their subscription numbers up should be incentive enough to give out free expansions.

Sour grapes.

[DaveV1.0]

NOBODY, ANYWHERE, needs to earn the $75+ million a month they make for their stupid little game

1. Is that $75 million net or gross? If it is gross, how much of that goes to game development, server management, electricity, office space, salaries, paying back loans, taxes, etc. How much goes to shareholders?
2. "NOBODY, ANYWHERE" needs to earn more than a couple of thousand dollars a year. No on needs a car, a computer, a cell phone, electicity, a bed, or even a house. For over 100,000 years, hominids lived on the plains and in forrests, with no fixed shelter, so no one needs a house.
3. They earn $75+million a month off that game because millions of people decided it was worth paying $15.00 a month to play their "their stupid little game". My question to you is if it is a stupid little game, why play it at all? Why go through all the effort of downloading the Mangos server if it is a stupid little game?

To me, it sounds like you are jealous, because WOW pulls in so much money, and cheap because you want to play the game for free. Are those grapes a little sour?

Ranting about character support on Slashdot

[YttriumOxide]

BTW, what is it with /. and the rendering of apostrophes? Is it just me, or Firefox, or what?

If you type on a non QWERTY keyboard, such as most of those in Europe, there's a good chance you're using the "wrong" apostrophe. On my German keyboard here for example, there's the "real" apostrophe on shift # (just left of the enter key), as well as the backtick/foretick key beside ß (which also doesn't display correctly, like this - ÃY). Slashdot doesn't handle a great deal of characters that aren't standard ASCII, which includes the foretick (renders as Â). Oddly enough, the backtick renders fine - `. It's pretty common for people in Europe to type the foretick rather than an apostrophe character, because it's easier to reach and you don't have to press shift on most layouts, whereas for an apostrophe you do. It's still wrong though, and looks hideous in a lot of fonts, even when it does display correctly, so I'd advise training yourself against it. In the case of copy/paste (I noticed it happens for you when quoting), be careful that the characters you're pasting in are correct, as the simple act of copying from a webpage may mess things up depending on the clipboard system in use (I seem to have no problems here using English language MacOS X 10.4 with Firefox 3.0.3, but potentially different combinations may be an issue)

I notice the foretick I've typed here doesn't render the same as your "apostrophe" however, so I wonder if you're typing yet another different character. As you can see from this post, I've used a fair few "real" apostrophes and they all show fine.

Despite my claims about the foretick/whatever-else not looking right and that you shouldn't use them as apostrophe, I ALSO think Slashdot needs to hurry up and actually support all of these characters (I mean come on... Unicode is NOT hard), because it's REALLY annoying to have to type things like Köln, when I'd rather just type Köln (which renders here as as KÃln). There's a LOT of characters that don't show correctly:

• ä = Ã
• ö = Ã
• ü = ü
• è = Ã
• é = é
• € = â
• æ = æ
• ç = Ã
• ê = Ã
• ð = Ã
• ß = ÃY

And many many more...

(note that some of these characters are required to correctly spell ENGLISH words also... æ in Encyclopædia or loanwords that we don't really have any alternative for, such as façade... so it's not even a decent excuse for them to say that Slashdot is primarily English speaking.)

Re:Ranting about character support on Slashdot

[schon]

some of these characters are required to correctly spell ENGLISH words also... æ in Encyclopædia

<quote voice="Homer Simpson">
Why do I need to learn English? I'm never going to England!
</quote>

Most Americans think that the correct way to spell it is "encyclopedia".

Re:Ranting about character support on Slashdot

[Silicon Jedi]

Yeah, we really need to be able to use the snobbish non-englishy spellings. It's encyclopedia and facade. Your point about Unicode for other languages and place name and such is important. Umlauts rock.

Re:Ranting about character support on Slashdot

[vrmlguy]

AutoHotkey. You can write a macro that will watch what you type, and if the foreground window is your web browser (and optionally, if you're on /.) then it can replace any key you define with any arbitrary string. I haven't tried but I expect that apostrophe replacement is trivial. There are also macros that will drop the string <a href="CLIPBOARD-CONTENTS"></a>" at the current cursor position, leaving the cursor between the tags; and now that I've had to do it by hand, I suspect I can also find a macro to replace various characters with their escaped HTML entities.

Re:Ranting about character support on Slashdot

[Rennt]

I can confirm it only happens when I'm cutting and pasting.

Makes sense that source material may be using a non-standard character. Guess I'll have to manually swap them if I want my post to look right in future. I didn't think of doing that before as they look just fine when I copy them in.

Its been bothering me for a while. Cheers.

Re:Ranting about character support on Slashdot

[YttriumOxide]

"Encyclopedia" is a 'non-englishy' spelling (in fact, my auto spell checker is underlining it in red right now)... It's an American spelling, and while I've certainly seen it, I really don't like it. I don't think I've ever seen "façade" spelled as "facade" though.

Do you also write "cafe" instead of "café"? Or how about naïve?

I agree about Unicode being important, but it's not so much because "Umlauts rock", but rather that it's just handy to be able to spell things the way they should be spelled! I have no problem writing "Copenhagen", "Cologne" and "Munich" if I'm writing something specifically in English such as a travel guide, but if I were to talk about the place names "in general" (as I would do here on Slashdot for example), I'd write "Købnhavn", "Köln" and "München".

Not related to your reply, but another time it'd be useful on Slashdot would be for various symbols such as © and ® - discussions requiring these symbols are definitely pretty common around here!

While typing this email, I also wanted to give an example of the word, "Foetus" with the ligatured oe, and the degree sign, but even after typing &oelig; and &#176;, they don't display... it's even worse than I'd thought!

Re:Ranting about character support on Slashdot

[YttriumOxide]

Unfortunately the app you linked to is Windows only. If I had the patience, I'd find an app (or make one myself) to do it on my preferred platforms, but since Slashdot is the ONLY site I have this problem with, it would be quite minimal gain. Also, I'd prefer the problem was fixed than creating a workaround anyway - if you work around problems, there's less incentive for a real fix anywhere down the line.

Re:Ranting about character support on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be because it is. Hint: different dialects of language has different rules. American English is closer to the Commonwealth English of 300 years ago than modern Commonwealth English. So really, they're the ones that have been screwing up "their" language.

Re:Ranting about character support on Slashdot

[maglor_83]

Do you also write "cafe" instead of "café"? Or how about naÃve?

Well yes actually, pretty much everyone does.

Re:Ranting about character support on Slashdot

[Chibi Merrow]

Yes, it's an American spelling. And that's exactly the point. Slashdot isn't a "primarily English" site, it's a "primarily American" site.

Also, it's spelled fetus. :)

Re:Ranting about character support on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Even here in England, people tend to get lazy and write them cafe, naive, facade, and so forth. Even the broadsheets like "The Times" are starting to get lazy with them - I'd imagine that's because UK layout keyboards do not have European characters available.

At the end of the day, language is a tool. If the reader can understand what is meant, then it serves its purpose. With that in mind, I wouldn't get too upset about remembering the accents. When you're dealing with a large english speaking community, chances are that you're going to effort that won't be noticed anyway.

Re:Ranting about character support on Slashdot

[walshy007]

but if I were to talk about the place names "in general" (as I would do here on Slashdot for example), I'd write "KÃbnhavn", "KÃln" and "München".

silly question, do you refer to japan as 'Nihon-koku'? And when you do refer to place names like the above, how many people have to google it to know what the devil your talking about, since most of us don't speak german etc

Re:Ranting about character support on Slashdot

[YttriumOxide]

Yes, I do refer to Japan as Nihon-koku if I'm talking to anyone that is from there or travels there regularly. I wouldn't say it to someone who doesn't though, since it's not so obvious or well known. (I go there rather a lot and know a lot of Japanese people, so that probably influences me a bit). I was more or less referring to European city names though, which anyone in the Western world really should be expected to be familiar with.

As per my last post, I do say København rather than Copenhagen, even though I don't speak Danish, and I've yet to have anyone misinterpret me. Same with Köln and München - I do speak German, but I find even non-German speakers know exactly where I'm talking about. I prefer to use the name of the place in the language to AVOID confusion... I speak to a lot of people from a lot of different countries, and each language has their own names for places - most people know the name in their own language, and the language of the country where the place is, so by using that name, I can be sure everyone understands. (Real world example: Just recently, someone from France was talking to me about a guy from "Varsovie" - I had no idea where it was, and he didn't know the English name "Warsaw". We both however knew the Polish name "Warszawa", so that cleared up the confusion.)

Re:Ranting about character support on Slashdot

[walshy007]

Perhaps it's just a European thing then, being in such close vicinity to so many languages. I dare say in most of the rest of the western world even though people know of the english names of most european cities, it would take (depending how different the name is) a small time puzzling thinking about it to get it at least.

Technical reasons

[Lonewolf666]

The first "M" in MMO means you need a lot more computing power and bandwidth on the server side than for a FPS server with a maximum of some 10 players. So even if the software company gave away the server software, it might be a bit too expensive for the average fan to run his own server for some 1000 players.

But a MMO vendor could still gain some goodwill by including the server software, thus ensuring there can be at least "small" freeshards once the official servers are closed.

Owners of Dead Tech

[WED Fan]

That's easy. Buy the code from them. If it's not already owned by a parent company,

Usually it is owned and so mired in ownership issues that is would be useless if the "owner" wanted to release it.

I worked for a...da da daaaaaa...DOT COM and between EDS, who had an agreement with us, Washington Mutual, who was acting as our white label credit department, and venture capitalists in South Korea and Europe, our technology was so tied up in who actually owned it, no one could even claim the authority to shut down the web site. The company is gone, but the web site is still active hasn't been updated since 2001, and the host is still being paid by some financial shell organization who has received instructions to do otherwise. Why, because noone has clear legal authority to do so.

Now, can you imagine what happens to the servers and code of companies that go belly up and why most can't, even if they wanted to, open up the system, or at least provide a free license to operate servers without them?

It costs less than my DSL!

[Nick Ives]

WoW costs less than the money I spend on my internet connection. Not that I play it, I tried it for the first time a few months ago and didn't get the habit. Seems MMORPGS really aren't my thing!

WoW is cheap for its target market, i.e. North America and Western Europe. It's the price of a few pints of beer here in the UK. It's cheap.

Insist on source escrow

[sjames]

If gamers stop buying games that depend on a server to operate, especially those that insist on phoning home before playing even in single player mode, the companies will be forced to escrow the server source such that the shutdown of their servers triggers a 3rd party to release the code to the public (and in fact, creates a legal obligation to do so).

If they really don't want to run servers anymore and also don't want the source released, they'll have to make some sort of arrangement with someone to run the servers, perhaps even licensing it to an interested co-op of players (stipulating that anyone who bought the client can play). I'm sure their terms would be quite reasonable considering that the co-op can just say no and wait for the escrow to release.

Really, users of many different software packages should insist on an arrangement like that. I've seen way too many situations where individuals and small businesses have man-years worth of data tied up in software that is no longer supported in any way or even where there are new versions, but the features they depended on have been removed or are broken in the new version.

EQ hold up to WoW?

[Anonymous Coward]

[quote]
Do you think EQ could even get a foot into the door today? Let's even give it up to date graphics, do you think it could? By today's standards it's boring, it's static, it's limited
[/quote]

Some data for you....

578 Zones - More than any game. In about 5-6 more years WoW might catch up

Many zones have changed over time, Befallen, Najena, Plane of Hate, etc....also, there are the Monster Missions, and Lost Dungeons missions that present the player with different dynamic zones

As for it being boring...I guess if you don't enjoy stategic play or exploring, or solving quests, or anything challenging then...sure. What game has anything other than the exploring part? There is no quest solving(the dialogs in newer games tell you what to do and maps show you where to go), there is no strategy required in newer games - you hit monsters until they die...doesnt matter what spells or abilities you use because they all have the same outcome, and everyone has the same abilities, just labelled differently.

No game has yet come near having the range of abilities EQ does across its 16 classes.

EQ - outdated yes, but you can not put down the mechanics of the game because it still surpasses anything currently out there or in development, and has the largest world of them all as well.

Re:EQ hold up to WoW?

[Opportunist]

And how many of those zones are still being visited? Even if you started today, how many would you get to see (unless you deliberately went out of your way to go there)?

Don't get me wrong, every game has it, but I have the feeling it's especially bad in EQ, most likely because it has been around for so long. There are areas that have been the hunting ground for months and years which are virtually deserted today. For many reasons. Expansions that come out that make certain parts obsolete due to better loot for this kind of players (level, class and playstyle) being offered in the new places, prerequisits that don't exist anymore (to give new players a chance to catch up), you name it.

EQ certainly still sets the bar for one of the most difficult and unforgiving games in the MMO business. But that's just not anymore what people want. People want easy games that are easy to beat. Face it, nobody wants a real challenge. To prove my point, take a look at what's successful and what's not...

atleast Hellgate: London tried to have offline...

[otopico]

Well, of of the oddities about Hellgate: London was its ability to be played offline. Aside from the company's horrible management and the troubled release, Hellgate is now a pretty fun game, especially one that is shutting down.

I think all games in the mmo space should have some offline content, but getting that into the games is another beast entirely.

The game has plenty of appeal

[SmallFurryCreature]

They sold close to a million copies and PLENTY of people gave the game a try.

The problem was that they listened to you.

They did release AO2.

They just didn't copy the sci-fi setting but the horrible launch.

AoC for those who been there for AO know they AOC really stand for Anarchy Online Continued.

Dark&Light still holds the #1 spot in bad MMO launches, and Vanguard is a strong number 2, but AoC sure as hell gave both a run for their money. And Funcom sure as hell ain't a SOE who can survive with a dozen games all performing mediocre.