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Tabula Rasa To Shut Down
NCSoft announced today that it will be closing down Tabula Rasa on February 28th. The sci-fi shooter-flavored MMO struggled for quite some time, despite recent attempts to draw in new players by announcements of new features, price reductions, and using Richard Garriott's trip into space as a promotion. We discussed Garriott's departure from NCSoft a couple weeks ago. This is NCSoft's second failed MMO, and apparently layoffs are in the works. They seem to be making an effort to make the game's last few months as fun as they can for their remaining players, though. "Before we end the service, we'll make Tabula Rasa servers free to play starting on January 10, 2009. We can assure you that through the next couple of months we'll be doing some really fun things in Tabula Rasa, and we plan to make staying on a little longer worth your while."
Last time the marketing department springs for a trip into space ...
They really WILL become a "tabula rasa".
Wait .. people play MMOs for fun? Why didn't they make it fun earlier? Maybe then it wouldn't be dieing.
This is why you spend 60 bucks on MMO's or other locked down games: just to see it disappear as the company goes under.
Asking around, no one so far has even heard of this game. I watched the intro video, looks cool. Too bad it's already over; I would say next time, look into advertising.
This is exactly why MMO's don't lend themselves well to keeping a historical imprint on society. One part of what defines us is what we did for entertainment, but without a real hard copy of a game (be it CD, cartridge, etc.), the archaeologists of tomorrow will never know what time we REALLY wasted. In fact that's one BIG problem with everything going to bits, everything needs electricity at some point to keep the records. One big EMF smackdown on the earth and its as if we never even existed past the early 2000's.
It's like when Bill Gates swam in a pool of money to promote Microsoft!
I wonder how long will the Star Trek MMO will last. Hop they learn some lesssons from this failed MMO.
From what I read of it and the little I saw it was trying to kinda be a sci-fi World of Warcraft. Ok... But the problem is World of Warcraft is really good. Blizzard really did a lot right in that game, things other games had failed miserably at (like having a very easy, engrossing introduction to the game). So if you are going to try and take on WoW, well you'd better be damn good. They weren't so there you go.
The MMOs other than WoW that seem successful are the ones that try and offer a real different gameplay experience. Something like Eve Online or Warhammer. They aren't trying to be WoW, they have their own idea of what a game should be. Now that may not get you 10 million players, but it can get you a comfortable niche. There are people who don't like WoW's way of doing things. If you make a game for them, you've got a good chance.
While I certainly think a game can compete with WoW, and we will see one at some point that does, it is going to have to be really good, and good out of the gate. WoW does a whole lot right and is generally very polished. So you've got to get all that down. If you don't, well then you are going to have people try your game and say "Eh, WoW was better,' and migrate back. Just changing the theme a bit or adding some bits won't help.
Personally what I want to see is an MMO that is really good that isn't trying to be WoW. I'd really like a more PvP oriented MMO. Warhammer has potential, but right now really lacks polish. I'd like to see an MMO that is as good as WoW, but in a different area. That is going to have a much easier time succeeding than something trying to take on the king.
Sounds like they're trying to squeeze a few boxed copy purchases out of people
No sig for you!!
Its not just spending the money... nor the company collapsing. Disney shut down their free MMO VMK for no apparently good reason except that they seemed to want to generate bad will among their customers. At least NCSoft is trying to "promote good will".
Who wants to donate endless hours in development and management of the game? Who wants to pay for the servers? Who wants to contribute assets to the game: art, animation, story, dialog, etc?
This is a shame; TR had a lot of potential to be more than just another shooty take on MMOs. Ancient mysteries, xeno-archaeology, a strong theme of religion and myth, a dramatic war.... It could have been a lot more. Instead it was pretty bland at times. They had a lot of great ideas but they never seemed to implement them in time or well enough.
I was in the closed beta, and I really really wanted to like this game. The music was cool, the settings were fantastic, the scaling was pretty nicely done, and it was open to the casual gamer... but it was flawed. It just didn't grab a person.
As I said, it's really a shame. It could have been a lot more. Oh, well. I hope they learned something from it's failure. I just hope that 'Worlds of Starcraft' doesn't waltz in and take over the SciFi MMO slot.
"I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
Back in 1997, I was playing a character on the old TrekMoo, when the Q (the admins) were in the process of moving to new servers. They decided to all scorched universe on the remaining players and I have to say, that was a heck of lot of fun. The Borg invaded, the Romulans and Klingons got their ass kicked and we intrepid few in the federation were forced to make some tough choices that included sacrificing our ship. It was a small community of text based adventurers, but the collaborative effort made it a hell of a lot of fun.
I'm surprised there aren't more scorched earth games, where we build up communities just to have them torn down. I hope the loyal players of playing Tabula Rasa get to have the same kind of experience. I know it influenced me as to what good collaborative theaterical improvisation was all about.
And before anyone points Quake out, recall how long it took for them to release the source, and also recall that the release included none of the actual graphic assets or maps.
Who wants to be the first to suggest to open source the leftovers?
Who wants to donate endless hours in development and management of the game? Who wants to pay for the servers? Who wants to contribute assets to the game: art, animation, story, dialog, etc?
This seems to fit with both the Google and the yahoo business model. Take your pick.
I'm sure other posters will mention Tabula Rasa's bugs, lousy control scheme, poor class balance, etc (typical MMO grievances) but to me the thing that always stood out about TR was its abysmal support for building communities.
Everyone's abuzz about Web 2.0 and "social networking," and somehow the TR devs didn't even see fit to have a Looking For Group feature in the game. The had on-line chat and a Friends list, and that's about it. The thing about massively MULTIPLAYER games is that they are only as good as the people you play with. Sure, a small percentage of MMO players exclusively solo, but for most people, the solo experience is basically a laggy, slightly glitchy single-player game, with extra monotonous grinding. In other words, you get bored of it after a month or two, max, just like any other single player game.
"Players come for the game, but stay for the community." -- I forget who said it, but that sums up most MMOs today. Compared to single-player games, any MMO is mediocre at best. The only reason people will pay $15/month for the MMO is to play with their friends. Tabula Rasa made it very difficult for me to locate people I might want to team with, let alone befriend. There was more incentive to solo than to assemble PUGs.
Suggestion to future MMO designers: Find a way to match up players with other players of similar game-play styles and compatible personalities. No, I'm not talking about in-game romance, just helping people find a good team. Match up Leeroy Jenkins with other Leeroy Jenkins, etc. Stop thinking of the players as an audience looking for "content." They're not. They're looking to hang out with friends and kill monsters.
Student: Is it true that the foundation of the universe is paradox?
Master: Well, yes and no.
The problem is that everyone sees the Gobs of money that blizzard is making and this "Hrm, I'd love to make that much" so they produce an MMO and hope it works. It's not to say that WoW is better then these MMO's, but it's to say that you have to have a certain about of luck to truly make it succeed.
Perhaps those people that are running unofficial WoW servers?
Personally, I'd love to see it all open sourced simply for the learning opportunity it would present. Seeing how such a large scale project is done would be quite fascinating.
For a lot of reasons not the least of which being such a thing would require a phenomenal amount of writing to be done to make all these unique quests and allow for all the branching. Hard enough to do something like that well in a single player game and in a huge multi player game, well it's near impossible. There's also technological hurdles to implementing such a thing.
At this point the closest you'll find to a game world you change is, again, in WoW. There are some quests that deal with a phased world. There are literally multiple versions of a given area and you experience the one relevant to your quest progression. So you do something and the world changes permanently because of it. However each person gets to do it. You are all in the same world, but there are multiple versions. Works pretty well.
At any rate the sort of thing you want isn't ever likely to come fully to fruition. You'd need something near a real artificial intelligence on the back end to deal with all this and a massive staff of writers and designers to try and implement this ever changing unique experience for millions of people.
With games you need to be satisfied to live in a small sandbox. There are going to be rules and boundaries of various kinds. That's part of what makes it interesting, fun, and doable. It is just like cards, you have to have a set of rules, limits on the deck and so on. If you just got people together and started drawing random shit on paper and trying to make a game you'd have the card game equivalent of Calvin Ball.
In terms of deep story and changing universe, you need to stick more to single player games, that's really the place it works. Play Mass Effect for a deep story, play WoW to kill night elves.
Who wants to pretend that open source is the magic bullet that will give us world peace?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
This is a fucking frost piss post you cock sucking teabaggers!
I beg your pardon? Did you say Frosty Piss?
But here's what I think: It's just a last ditch effort to generate buzz and customers. If they get a significant increase in players, down the line there may be an announcement that the death is being put off. Then, a bit later there will be value added content for a fee. If things really pick up, they can make it all pay-for-play. Or, if nothing happens, it dies on cue.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
First and only time I heard about this game was that trip to space gimmick. Going to their page there is not a single gameplay Video you can actually watch (instantly as in flash player). Sure, you can download 600MB file if you are feeling desperate for info, but most people will just skip it and look for a game that is not ashamed of how it looks.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
Why doesn't anyone mention Anarchy Online anymore?
Personally it's still the best MMORPG out there, it may not have as many people online as it used to have a couple of years ago, but it's still very popular.
I liked tabula rasa, but it lacked the 'twinking' aspect that AO has, and WoW doesn't.
AO may look dated, but for sheer immersion it's the best out there.
Has anyone played Tabula Rasa ? I've only heard of it, mostly due to Richard Garriott's involvement, but I don't know any players. From reading the write-ups, it sounds a lot like Sony's PlanetSide, with some anime RPG elements bolted on.
PlanetSide never really got big enough, so there wasn't enough action to keep things interesting. There's really no fun in being the only guy on the continent, capping base after base without resistance.
If Tabula Rasa suffered the same fate, well... sucks but that's just what happens. That's the problem with MMOs, you need to build up hype before they launch, else it's a false start and it never goes anywhere after that.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
The difference being Google is a useful tool to a lot of people. TR is just entertainment.
I like your observation that community is the key ingredient that gives an MMO longevity. It makes me wonder if an open-source MMO might one day not only rival the current big commercial ones, but even become far more long lived than any of them because its community would last forever, and it could never get shut down, regardless of perceived success or failure.
The easy attack on that idea is simply that "server farms cost a ton of money", but MMOs don't have to be programmed to require centralized server farms, and many FPS communities are more than happy to put up a server for public use anyway. There's no reason why such machines couldn't be confederated to underpin a community MMO.
What's more, there are MMO models that require very little in the way of centralized computing power. For example, Guild Wars has a heavily instanced framework, so that once in a fighting zone, there can never be more than 8 people playing together, which requires very little power from server systems --- in fact an instanced MMO programmed like that could even be run in P2P mode while in the instance, merely sending occasional game state updates to a central point, a very low centralized power requirement.
Yet, you still interact with vast numbers of people when in town or in your guild or when messaging across the world, so the MMO feeling is there despite the server requirements being not much different to those of an IRC server. Technically, this approach is definitely possible for a community-run MMO without any commercial backing.
We have all the open-source components for making both the client and server sides of a community MMO, and community-developed online games are announced occasionally, but we don't really hear of any success stories. Is it that none of them are any good, or just that the commercial ones get all the attention?
It sure would be nice to put one's investment of game time into a community-developed and community-run MMO instead of into a commercial one, both to avoid draining the wallet and to ensure that your favourite world exists forever. There must be huge merit to having such a community game world, if only it could be got off the ground in a flexible enough form.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Basically richard garriot used his 20 year old fame from the ultima series to scam the biggest korean mmorpg maker to let him and his deadbeat chronies handle their business in the "west". He then ran the main franchise and it's sequel into the ground and blamed it on western audiences. Since he was LORD FUCKING BRITISH, they gave him money to make his own shitty game to show them how it was done, and then conned them into sending him into space as advertisement for the game which he convinetly forgot to advertise once he got his space suit. After coming back from space, he promptly QUITS the company and gives everyone the finger. Now his multi-million dollar piece of shit is being shut down. This comes as a huge surprise considering how much money Ncsoft has literally thrown away on their other games just to keep a presence in the western market.
The successful RPG has to give a player a significant and entertaining role to play in a world that invites and rewards deep exploration. Tech isn't as important as art and story. That is a very different universe than the one inhabited by Yahoo and Google.
I remember how Garriot's Ultima Series took a nose drive. Ultima 8 was bad enough; last Ultima I ever bought, but Ultima 9 was worse; just a really sloppy job. Does this sound familiar?
"The game was so poorly received that no other Ultima was ever released. Richard Garriott shortly left Origin, which was shut by parent company EA Games soon after." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_IX#Controversy
Poor NCsoft. Perhaps they should have Googled him before they hired him. ;-)
Yeah, except no one cares about this!
I started playing PlanetSide during the open stress testing. I loved that game. I bought it the day it was available at the local EBGames. The game was simple: kill the other guys and take their territory. It was like this until WoW's open beta, then something happened...
They started adding crazy crap: now certain bases couldn't be captured just by taking them over, you had to grab a football (LIU I think they tried to call them?) and take it back to another base you controlled. Oh wait, look at that, you're not on just one planet anymore, the planet blew apart and now you're on a bunch! Holy shit Jenkins, you have to go underground now! This is when people started to stop playing. When the fundamentals of the game changed. The part that made it fun was teaming up with a few squads and taking a heavily defended base, not running a football. If I wanted fucking football I would have bought Madden. I still miss flying my reaver....
I started playing World of Warcraft during open beta stress testing. I still play it. I am a pretty hard core end game raider. I have killed Illidan, I have seen the Sunwell. There are a lot of things WoW does right. The main one is the developers don't just add a bunch of stupid shit simply to add a bunch of stupid shit. This is what screwed up PlanetSide. If the developers of PlanetSide had left well enough alone with the goddamn rules of the game and stuck to just adding more vehicles, weapons, maybe the world breaking apart could have been handled and we could have seen some new terrain, but no, they add in ridiculous crap like certain bases have impervious shields unless you capture the other bases around it in order. Oh yeah, and you can only cap bases that you have a base connected to via this lattice shit. What, the, fuck guys? This is WAR, not checkers. I should be able to flank. I should be able to surprise my enemy.
I started playing Tabula Rasa during open beta stress testing. This game was bad. Terribly bad. The graphics were horrible, the animations were junk, the combat.... ugh. The storyline, while very good and is what interested me in the first place, was somehow non-existent in the actual game. Maybe I was jaded by WoW. No, I am jaded by WoW. I expect certain things of a modern "post-WoW" MMO. I expect not to look like I'm ice skating while I'm running. I expect that if I read the whole quest text that it will tell me what I need to do and I don't have to guess. I expect to have options in combat and not to just be completely useless if I run out of ammo. I expect to be given the opportunity to make enough money to buy said essential ammo via my characters normal course of events without having to go out of my way to farm at level 5. TR was deleted from my system after 3 days of play. I am not surprised this game is ending. It was very bad.
I am so surprised no one sees the immense benefit that NCSoft could gain from Open Sourcing this program! There are plenty of business models for Open Source software!
...! Uh, wait... Twitte-no. Shit.
Look at
There is much speculation in the CoH community that it will loose subscribers and eventually shut down with the advent of champions Online, a similar and more in depth game by former CoH devs Cryptic Studios...
These guys did, for a different MMO. They did raise 200.000 EUR to buy the remains of the bankrupt company. Their plan was to make the source (for client and server) free. Users would pay for the operations of the servers, development would proceed as any other free software project.
They lost the bid to another company, than run the game in a more traditional way.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I extensively beta tested Tabula Rasa, but in the end did not buy the release version based on the experience. It's a classic example of an interesting idea rushed out the door before it was finished.
The classes were poorly differentiated, and in most cases the base skills were better to use than the later specialized skills. So most classes spammed basic attacks. Probably one of the worst games I've played as far as polishing classes goes.
If I flip through my CD's 30 years from now, and I find something that makes me go nostalgic, I just want to be able to put it in the drive and play it again. With MMO's there's no such possibility. Even if you wouldn't mind walking through an empty world, you still need the support of the company that ships it to make it work. Of course there's no good technical reason why you shouldn't be able to run an MMO server on a LAN party or something, but as it stands MMO's just aren't built that way. When you pull out any MMO of today in the future, all you can do is stare at the disk and reminisce for a bit. I realize that used to be true in every walk of life, but for me one of the nice things about games* was that you could relive the experience.
*Applies in a slightly different way to books, film and music as well, which modern life also alows us to keep around where this used to be impossible.
You are asking for conflicting goals:
If you want an individualized experience with complex moral dilemmas, plus a long-term story, you simply cannot deliver that inside of a Massive game. Can't be done.
If you want quests that have never been done before, will never be done again, yet still integrate with a long-term plot, affect your character for a long time, and involve real moral decisions, you are simply looking in the wrong place. What you are asking for requires the services of a living, breathing Gamemaster. Period.
If this is the sort of this thing you are looking for, you need to go back to pencil and paper gaming, and stop looking on the computer.
SirWired
There's a small chance it could be used to compete with them later, and the lawyers will wring their hands and say 'nothing to gain and think of the liabilities'. But yeah, good point, very rarely do we see companies shutting down a project open sourcing it. I plead guilty. I wrote a pretty cool database product in the Internet boom days and made a good living selling it. Eventually the market gravitated towards the solutions you see now so I killed it. Could have opened sourced it, but occasionally when I have open sourced stuff I've come across occasional jackasses posting on public forums bitching about the program (they don't email and tell you, they just like to bitch). So at job interviews employers googling on me could find this. See where I'm going? No good deed goes unpunished
First, I was supposed to beta test it. The installer kept giving me a weird error about a FIPS cryptographic package. I was never able to install it. The NCSoft Support team didn't seem to have a clue as to how to solve the problem and install the game. If anyone deserves to be sued, it's NCSoft. People bought TR with the expectation that it would be an on-going experience. It is now shutting down. The value that was expect is no longer.
They're using their grammar skills there.
So let me get this straight... As an MMO operator you only do the 'really fun things' once you are going out of business?
Because, I guess it wouldn't make sense to have been doing those from day one. You know, to stay in business?
Seriously, I played TR. I enjoyed it immensely during the first half of the game. Then it got incredibly repetitive and boring. The crafting and economy were simply not good enough. End-game activities were not good enough. In today's world, those are two make-it or break-it pieces, which TR did not have.
Brilliantly conceived, poorly executed. Same ol' story.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Surely it wouldn't be easy, but you're just a stick in the mud. You could do this. The first step would be having a system without explicit questgivers, just goals that AI entities and the player characters must fulfill to survive -- IE, not getting too hot and burning to death, not getting too cold and dying of hypothermia, not running out of food to eat daily, etc.
Now quests are "unique" not in the sense that nobody has done what you've done before (stealing food from an NPC king to feed a dying NPC orphan, hoeing a plot of land to grow food for yourself, killing the hungry goblin NPCs who terrorize the town for it's food which they also need to survive), but they're unique in the sense that each player comes up with the idea to do the quest himself, and he does so for more tangible reasons than "I need xp." His actions will affect the course of events with these NPCs.
And if you think about it, it shouldn't be that hard to incorporate live gamemasters into an MMO format. The scale of economy should be large enough that you could have a single GM for every 100 to 1000 players or so come online for a few hours a day and manage NPCs (remove corpses, spawn new NPCs) in order to create interesting, dynamic, emergent situations in the gameworld that seem like "quests" to the players.
In short, we need a game that mimics reality more than the current vanilla-brand fetch quest MMOs do. Tabletop was always the best for that, it was it's strength, I agree with you. But you're just a damn pessimist and there's certainly no easier way to be wrong faster than saying something can "never" be done.
While it's nothing like what we've been discussing, "Hinterland" has been seizing a lot of my time over the past couple of days.
Now just throw in the option for "hardcore" servers which don't allow player characters to respawn, and allow open PVP, and I think you've got a game that would appeal to ye olde hardcore tabletop RPG crowd. It'd be truly immersive if any actor in the simulation could die permanently, either to a sword in the belly or just from the lack of an adequate food supply.
This only goes to show what I always say: nothing, NOTHING, will ever compare to Meridian 59 - still running after all these years. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynOWe89A4IY
I added the word "nerds" to http://wordandlink.com/, you should add a word too.
So with Richard gone, and this project X closing down, where does that leave Destination Games? Did it really exist? From what I read, I didn't realize that Richard was just am employee or NCSoft. I see Richard's castle everyday driving to work, and with a failed game, and nothing big done, but a lot spent, he must either have some great investments elsewhere, or made crapload of money from Ultima. Good for him, and I wish him well.
I only started with PlanetSide when it got free to play for the first levels. I enjoyed it for the most part, but I agree that the Lattice Logic Unit (LLU - the football) seriously degraded the game. And the nodes-in-a-graph base layout really sucked for attacking. But the game had some redeeming features; if you had a base with one feature that was connected to another base (basically, you'd need all bases between them) you'd get that feature too. So you could have a base with a vehicle plant and no shields, or both, or none. Or whatever.
In the few months I've played it I've only been in 2 sieges, one attacking, one defending. The defending one was the most fun. People coming in from all sides, artillery left and right, aircraft flying over. I was an anti aircraft MAX dude. Lots of fun. Assault on the other hand, was worthless. It's just attack the base, die, respawn, repeat. For four hours.
Here's a tool to help you in your quest to become a pedant: http://conjugator.reverso.net/conjugation-english-verb-swim.html
"swam" is correct.
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
I play Tabula Rasa and when this announcement came out many of us thought the same thing,..
If they're ditching this project (and as it's the best game that no-one knows about) what would it take for the user community to take over the game?
Obviously we *JUST* found out about this and are just brainstorming the concept, but there are some people on board with the idea that are 100% serious, and several have internal connetions to NCSoft.
Last night we set up a discussion board (quick and dirty) to kick things off for brainstorming, updates etc...
Yeah I know you can shoot a million bullets into this idea right now, but any "Constructive" help would be appreciated on the boards.
http://www.changingwind.org/savetr/signup.php
The concept is that it would be run by a group of gamers, so the things that were the ultimate failures of TR in the first place (user community tools, social aspects, gamer support, advertising) might see a vast improvement.
If you have any ties to "gamer media" I ask that you take a chance to follow a story that could be a huge Cinderella story, or a possible nightmare, but should be interesing either way.
I started playing Tabula Rasa this September and have been hooked ever since. Its a really good game, really underrated in my opinion.
Well anyway, not only is the NCSoft team planning on making the last few months a lot of fun, there is also going to be a nice present for people who currently have active accounts: This is something I'm definitely thankful for NCSoft willing to give me =)
But don't pretend like it is the only way. There's a lot that WoW does better than Runescape. Graphics, would be a big one. WoW is just a beautiful game, especially with the Lich King expansion. Part of that is because it uses and requires 3D hardware, but also that is because there were some really good artists behind it. IT actually isn't the most high end, photorealistic game out there. I've got games that hit the GPU a lot harder. However the art assets in it are very well done, and the game looks fantastic for it.
So while there is certainly value in games that are easy to access, there is also value in games that have more design effort behind them. That, of course, requires more money and also is likely to require a more powerful computer to render.
As far as numbers go, I think you are confused. For one, the 10 million number cited isn't people who've tried WoW, it is the number of people who are currently paying Blizzard on a monthly basis to play. For US and Europe that means people with the month paid out (you pay per month in those regions) in Asia it means people who have paid to play at least once that month (it's pay per hour over there).
Now look at this chart: http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart1.html
Unless they are drastically wrong, and as far as I know they are the best numbers out there, Runescape doesn't have near the players you are claiming.
So I think it is wonderful that there is a game like that. It is somewhere in between a more expensive, large, typical MMO and a totally free web based game like one of my coworkers likes to play (I can't remember the name right now). However please don't pretend it's the One True Way that all game studios should be going.
You are kidding yourself. Games do not fail because they don't have Mac versions. Sorry, but it's true. There just aren't a whole lot of Macs out there, percentage wise, and of those out there only a fraction of the owners are gamers. If the game couldn't succeed on the Windows market, it doesn't matter if it had a Mac client. Yes it would have brought in a few more subscriptions but two things to remember:
1) They didn't need a few more, they needed a lot more. This isn't a case of "Oh if only we'd had 1,000 more people play we'd have made it." They needed more people to play and in particular more people to KEEP playing. Their big problem is people tried it and left. Adding a platform doesn't really help that.
2) It would add cost. Cross platform isn't free, especially if done right. This adds more development and support costs and thus increases the number of copies you MUST sell to be profitable. So if you make a Mac version and it gets you 10,000 more sales, that doesn't help if the cost of doing so requires 30,000 more sales to break even.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with companies doing Mac versions or that they shouldn't especially for successful titles, but please cut the bullshit of "Well if they'd released for a Mac it would have done well." No, not the case. It's a very minority market share (single digit percentage wise) and a non-trivial amount of it's market is in things like media production and so on where games aren't relevant.
I actually own two NCsoft games. Then about a year or two ago came across one of the Microsoft FUD adds with NCsoft as the example company. I wrote an email informing them that I did not appreciate their participation in the program and would not be purchasing any of their software in the future. I followed through. I doubt they will, but I wouldn't be upset if they did go under just for bad karma.
No quests? Are you nuts? What exactly are you supposed to do all day long in the game then?
From your reply, it sounds as if your only goal is to replace XP and quest grinding with a grind for food, money, faction, etc. I don't necessarily see this as much of an improvement. You are still grinding, you are just grinding for a different goal.
I'm not seeing a whole lot of motivation in your game. Okay, I steal food from the NPC King which pisses him off, (or reduce my faction, if you want to translate into MMO terms) to feed the NPC Orphan. (Maybe that kicks my alignment around some.) Now what? Okay, maybe now such-and-such barmaid will notice my kindness and give me a place to crash for the night so I don't freeze.
All I did just now was faction farm in exchange for shelter, and I'm going to have to repeat the whole process tomorrow in some form, since I have no overarching quest to do. I'm not seeing the fun here...
If you don't like quests, you don't need a new game to avoid them; simply don't accept or complete any quests, and turn yourself into a Money/Food/Faction grinding robot. You can do this now in WoW, but I'm afraid you'll end up looking like a Chinese Gold Farmer.
For better or worse, quests provide motivation for players to go to new places, obtain new gear, improve their stats, along with providing plot tidbits, which are triggered by their completion.
The GM's you are calling for aren't real GM's. Removing corpses and spawning some new NPC's can be done by the computer already without any help. And if those NPC's aren't handing out quests, what are they doing other than more-or-less the same thing they were doing yesterday, just plopped down in a different place with new stats?
If a GM is spread out among 1000 players how much individual growth could he possibly provide? I don't see this as being any better than the current model of content patches providing new things for all players to do.
Tabletop "was" the best for providing individual player growth? You do know that tabletop still exists... there are a huge number of games out there, with countless others under development, along with enough content to keep you busy until you die.
And yes, I will be so bold as to say that this is something computers "can't" do. Computers can't do plot. This isn't pessimism, it's realism.
SirWired
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Hey. I liked those ads. I thought they were funny.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" -Voltaire
that the game you just described sounds like arse.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, watch it -- I'm huge!
I used to be quiet a fan of Planetside. My subjective opinion is that it is simply the best game ever made...
I might have not been born with wings but I damn well earned that transportation citation. Remember those Magrider squads that drove funny? Well that was me and my drunk engineer buddies. Sometimes it was hard to tell us apart from newbies. Believe me I know. Erratic motion, variable aim, continuous exchange of creative terminology with friendly cloackers inappropriate for a game rated T... What gave us away as true psychopaths was the amount of observable shell impacts and bullet holes. All things considering though I was a pretty decent pilot as well. A flying Mag is as exhilarating from the inside perspective as it is breath taking from the outside. Quiet literally so as it lands on the observers face and half of their squad. I strongly believe that a world where you are not prosecuted but infarct encouraged by your superior officers to drive a tank in a state of severe intoxication and awarded medals for manslaughter, deserves a second chance. It just needs optional blood stains on everything (most importantly vehicles) and rag doll effects. May be something similar to Fallout 3 eye candy.
Alas the old days are gone now. I truly hope that one day demons of creation will pull their heads out of their asses and end the never ending Zerg fest with 3 guns that Planetside has become.
A lot of fights used to be outside base. Believe me it was far more rewarding. The population cap was much higher too. It was freaking awesome. Big fights would last for over 24 hours with occasional skirmishes in other places. Like a 3 way fight inside volcano on Searhus. I loved that place.
Tabula Rasa probably wouldn't have sucked, had Garriott's original designs and visions been realized. The man makes an interesting game, just look at the (single player) Ultima series. But they didn't let him. They changed pretty much everything until the only thing the retail version had in common with the original idea was the name and the word "logos".
Also, respawn rates were WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY too fast for soloers, given that there are almost NO non-aggro-patrolled areas outside towns. Even killing fast, a soloer could not clear 10 mobs before mob #1 respawns. And to require a group for safe travel in a very underpopulated game is just asinine.
They deserve to shut down because they made stupid choices. NEXT!
I could see that an EMP pulse couldn't do diddly to a DVD or a CD, but I would think a hard drive might be a different story.
This is my sig.
I agree with your post, but I can say that I've already played a MMORPG that does that: the nwn server I used to play on.* The way the servers run in this case is not a huge world, but more of a community who plays together on the same server who is run by somebody (not the game developers) out of their own pocket. For example, in our server the admins were very good about removing a lot of exploits that the game devs didn't bother to remove, so rather than policing our player-base, we, the DMs, spent the majority of our time running unique quests for the players and developing the plot lines of the world. There was an admin or two who spent a large amount of time just making permanent changes to the world based on the in-game event as well.
From what I gather, in the larger game worlds with professional GMs, you don't get that kind of attention. Basically, what I think is needed to be done is an open source MMORPG modeled after nwn that is completely community modifiable and doesn't require a walk mesh to be downloaded each time you change something on the world (nwn2 did, which is one reason why it bombed). That gives motivated people the ability to create their own communities for role-playing and it gives a much more rich story-telling environment for the admins.
*I won't tell you which because the original admins who developed everything found other things to do and the ones who replaced them were a bunch of asshats, so I left. (But that's to be expected, nothing lasts forever.)
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Garriott, listen to me man! Open source the thing. If you've got any choice in the matter open source it so that it can live forever. The concept is solid you just need more time.