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On Transitioning To an Asian-Style MMO, Such As Aion
A. Harvey writes "Ten Ton Hammer has an interesting article about the transition to Asian-style MMO games, specifically Aion. 'In many ways, the West is catching up to the East in terms of gaming. Per capita gaming ... and broadband proliferation is markedly higher in Asian markets.
Gaming is much more social in the East as well; many players gather together in internet cafes to spend their game time with each other. Another surprising difference in most Asian-based games is that most functions of game control are mouse based.' I think the author hit the nail on the head that Aion will be a big success in North America and will introduce a lot of players to games with an Eastern feel."
There is a chink in your armor. Your viewpoint is slanted.
Asia (well, Japan and Korea) is a huge gaming market for several reasons.
First, games allow a user to step outside of themselves for a short period. One of the central tenets of Asian culture is adherence to hive mentality. If one were to step outside of what is universally acceptable, they would find themselves shunned, ridiculed, and possibly physically threatened. Gaming provides an outlet for the frustration brought on by such external oppression. Now, instead of being Kenji the juku slave, he can be Wang Hung Lo the Lvl40 Mage.
Another reason is that gaming takes the player out of the milieu of socializing with peers and puts the gamer in a very secluded world. This is a well known phenomenon and is used to great effect in the military where removing the soldiers from the battlefield allows them to make kills remotely without suffering from the shock of actually killing someone. The technical term for this mental state is solipsism. Most gamers are losers in real life and need to find a way to either take revenge on their tormentors or to become something they can never be. Games provide this in spades. A young kid can lead a platoon into battle or he can pick off enemies as a sniper. To the gamer, the other objects on the screen have no significance as other human beings. They are just another part of the game.
The last reason that Asians find gaming to be more rewarding (and thus take part in it more than North Americans) is that their popular culture lends itself to the cartoonish graphical descriptions of games. Anything from wide-eyed Cho-bits to tentacle rape fantasies to huge mechanical suits to feminized men, Asian culture identifies these things as good, and the games can easily reflect them. Real life would frown on rape, but games give some players the ability to practice their sociopathic misogyny on a carefully-drawn crying anime character. North Americans identify strongly with such archetypes like gangsters, so games like GTA appeal very directly to that feeling. Asians, OTOH, due to their small stature and relatively weak political power, want to augment their bodies (through Gundam suits, for example) and take out their aggressions on their oppressors (as in Boss Kancho).
To sum up, it's not necessary to emulate or try to learn anything from Asian gaming. Their culture is fundamentally different from ours, so things like negative points for kills would only frustrate American players. We have our ways, they have theirs.
I have not read the article, and I don't know much about MMO's but I feel I must comment anyway. Asians suck and all you stupid Linux-lovers need to stop playing Asian games to try to pick up Asian girls. It wont work. They hate you.
For what it's worth, I think Bioware's KOTOR Online thing will have huge box sales and big initial numbers, and it will be a great Bioware RPG, but static content does not make for MMO subscriber retention.
What do you mean? The world in WoW is very static and we see how well that has done.
AoC was a terrible, shit game and flopped for many other reasons than you stated. One, a lot of stuff advertised was not in launch, I don't even know if DX10 is implemented yet, I stopped paying attention to that wreck a long time ago. Two, there were bugs upon bugs upon bugs. I've seen games in beta FAR more polished than AoC was. Three, the big attractions to the game, like sieges, just didn't work right. Four, the GMs were volunteers and were brats that didn't know what the rules and would suspend people on FFA PVP servers because they personally felt that people shouldn't gank lowbies, or such. WoW had a much better GM staff.
Warhammer just got boring after awhile and the questing world is no-where near as fun or as interesting as WoW's. Kind of ironic given that WoW's world (or at least elements from it) are obvious ripoffs from the Warhammer universe, and they didn't offer enough incentives for capturing areas. I don't know what the current state of the game is, I quit because of lack of interest and (college) classes.
A random aside: Of all the MMOs I played, WoW really was the best, and whether WoW was enjoyable or not is completely contingent on the people you play with. I had a lot of fun playing WoW back with my (old, now disbanded) guild, probably more fun than I'm having now. I still chat with people I met in the game years later. I don't really know where the game has gone now.
I have faith in KOTOR, though, because Bioware always seems to release truly great stuff. But only time will tell. As for Aion, I'm not really sure what is supposed to be unique about it. I have to say I doubt it will hit WAR's launch numbers...