It's not funny when you have to spend most of your online time fending off horny guys looking to cyber. It's actually pretty disruptive.
Yeah, generally I'd think the wedding chapel and all is a pretty cute idea. But it just advocates using the game as a medium for picking up on the opposite sex. I don't go out to singles bars with my wife, and I don't want to put up with the same behavior in my gaming.
Not to mention that for a lot of these people their online relations aren't a joke to them even if it may be to the other person involved. That brings up the whole situation of cyber stalking, which I have seen some dead serious cases of in the past.
My argument is simply that online RPG's are not the place for it. Social community games like The Sims Online or Second Life are better suited for this, if that's what you want to do with your online time.
As a married gamer with a wife who also games, I find the idea of advocating in-game romance to be inappropriate.
It's bad enough as it is. Anyone who has either played a female character or hung out with a female in a MMORPG knows that a majority of your time is spent trying to get rid of unwanted would-be suitors. Even saying "She's really my wife out of game. Quit hitting on her, you ass" gets you nowhere with these poor desperate disrespectful kids.
It's to the point that my wife and I have both stopped playing online RPG's. You can try and report harassment, but when 90% of the male population of the game participates in the act, nothing happens about it.
Online RPG's should not be used as hook-up joints. We're there trying to play the game as was intended. Not to listen to a bunch of pathetic teenagers trying to pick up on my wife. It's not what the game is there for and I don't consider it appropriate. If you're that pathetic that you feel you have to pick up women on line try some chat room (Married and Flirting in Yahoo! Chat comes to mind for you losers that must try to pick up married women), or a love shack property in The Sims Online. Don't come disrupt our gaming with your sexed-up crap.
Unfortunately, present day MMORPG designers have considerably less creativity than your average banker. Otherwise they would realize how easy bullet time is to implement.
Obviously you can't slow down the whole world for everyone. Which is why you return to the wonderful world of turn based party-only combat! Take the combat system used in the pioneer MMORPG, The Realm, and add features to bring it up to date.
It's a shame that this kind of combat system would deviate too much from the standard MMORPG template. Otherwise we might have a decent game for once.
I hope you're right. This was one of the few games I had to look forward to. Biblical apocalyptic games never do all that great and unfortunately it's one of my favorite settings for games. Let's hope someone grabs it up for release.
I think there's some money to be made in opening up retro arcades. A step back in time for those of us who grew up in the video arcades of the 80's. You'd have mostly classic games, but some new ones to keep things interesting. Throw some 80's music on the speakers and set up a hot dog stand and you're in business. Anyone want to be my sponsor? I just need the funding...
Also, I think the future of arcade gaming has to do with VR. VR will start to hit the gaming scene again in the next few years. Since the equipment may be too expensive for home users, arcades will pop back up offering people the chance to play them.
And really, arcades aren't dead. Isn't an internet cafe almost like an arcade? Lots of people go there specifically to game. Especially in Asia.
Maybe we'll finally get a decent pirate themed game. Sea Dogs was buggy. Sea Dogs 2 was looking good until it became Pirates of the Caribbean (Blech... Disney). Pirates! still remains the ultimate pirate game.
Anyone tried Tropico 2: Pirate Cove? That's supposed to be pretty decent as well.
"It is curious that they are excluding Star Wars Galaxies -- is that only because they can't because of LucasFilm licensing?"
I'm guessing it's something else. The game is Star Wars and it has been hyped all to hell and back. They *know* it's going to sell massive numbers off the shelf. Whether or not people continue subscribing is a different matter. They're going to get that $12 (extra $12 for people who already play EQ/Planetside/etc) from all those people.
Now, if the game sinks after release and turns out to be a real piece of crap, I think we'll see it in the $21 a month package eventually.
The only reason they're doing it with EQ2 (which is also guaranteed to sell numbers off the shelf) is to make sure all those current EQ subscribers transition over to EQ2.
"Are there a lot of people who have time to play multiple online RPGs?"
This is the best point about multi-game subscriptions. Even back in college (when we have all the time in the world) I didn't have the time to keep up with two MMORPG's. Believe me, I tried. I always found myself eventaully going to one or the other full-time.
I have seen MMORPG's that claim to be for the "casual" gamer, but none live up to the hype. If you don't spend loads of time online, powerleveling your character, then you can't keep up with the world. You never get to participate in the more advanced features. Eventually even hunting becomes impossible as in order to level you need to fight powerful creatures who require party combat to beat. Good luck finding a party, getting equipped, finding a monster, and destroying it in the hour you have before bed.
A game like Planetside may turn out better in this regard. The fast action and game design should let you jump in and out of the game at your leisure and still have a blast. It is a FPS after all.
So I think the only way this will work well is if you offer several different genre's of games. Unfortunately all the rest of the games will just be there when you're taking a break from the RPG.
Since we're now in the 'Make MMORPG's out of popular movies' trend, let me make a few suggestions based on some of the most popular movies of all time.
Citizen Kane Casablanca 12 Angry Men Singin' In The Rain
Why are so many of you disappointed about this being 3D? I can say it until I'm blue in the face. Play Gabriel Knight 3. Proof positive that adventure games are even better in 3D. So many more places to hide things. So much more to see. It's like watching a TV show where you have your own camera being able to move around in the scene. Trust me. It's great if done well.
I was a rabid MUD/MMORPG player from '92 to '97. I never got so bad as to blow off classes/appointments to play, but damn near every minute I spent at home was spent in front of an online RPG.
Then I took a look at myself and figured out how much of a loser I was. Toward the end I spent much of my online time pissed off. Games were buggy, the dev team kept changing the rules, griefers were everywhere, everybody was powergaming and not role-playing. I just kept thinking "the next new game won't have these problems". So I became an online RPG hobo. Hopping trains from one game to the next in hopes of a better game. Well, that game never came. I realized that game would never come and that I was an idiot for wasting my time on this crap. So I muttered quite a few choice words at the MMORPG industry and promised that they'd never take my money again. And they haven't...
I'm a gamer deep down and always will be, so this left a void in my life. I still wanted to role-play in a large group, in a fantasy setting. So I took up fantasy LARPing. We run around in the woods for the weekend with padded swords, going on quests, having festivals, playing our characters, and beating the crap out of trolls, skeletons, and each other.
Now, a lot of people look at LARPing as the ultimate stupid geek-fest. Bunch of Tolkien nerds who really think they're wizards or something. All I can say is at least we're outside, socializing with real people (even if they are playing a character), learning real survival skills, and getting real exercise. If it came down to LARPers vs. MMORPG players in the end, the LARPers would inherit the Earth.
I'm hoping as the social ills and false promises of MMORPG's become more clear, the real role-players will join us at LARP and leave the powergamers to their anti-social leveling.
Any word on multiplayer capabilities yet? Nihilistic's V:tM game had excellent multiplayer, along with the ability to script add-ons in Java. So anything they didn't put in the game could easily be scripted in by us fans.
There were only two problems with Redemption's multiplayer. 1) Finding players who didn't want to powergame and then get mad and leave when you won't let them. 2) Finding storytellers that didn't just throw a bunch of NPC's in a room and let you beat on them.
Just another classic case of the player base ruining the online aspect of an RPG.
I actually got to play in one game run by some marketing guy at White Wolf. It was proof of how great the multiplayer portion of Redemption actually was.
Troika's not known for doing any multiplayer really, so is there any hope?
Just another prank pulled off by some students at MIT. On the web site you can clearly see a picture of a female standing there at the urinal playing the game. How can she do that? It's a known fact that women do not exist at MIT.
I'm still waiting on that elusive graphical MUSH. MUD's have their modern counterparts in hack n' slash MMORPG's like EQ (and every other MMORPG out today). Now MOO's are getting theirs. When will we get an environment to sit back and really role-play a story instead of being suckered down the path of stat maxing on the leveling treadmill?
For proof of what "modern" adventure games would be check out Gabriel Knight 3 or Starship Titanic.
Gabriel Knight 3 is, in my opinion, the greatest adventure game ever. The graphics are beautiful, the voice acting is excellent (led by Tim Curry as Gabriel Knight), and the story is amazing. I need more adjectives, this game is that great. It is proof that you can take a Sierra adventure game into a 3d environment and have it work extremely well. It ended with a whole setup for GK4, but unfortunately I doubt we'll ever get it.
I mention Starship Titanic because it shows how a text based control interface can still work and be fun. The greatest thing about adventure games was that you could do anything. Even if you got the standard "I don't know how to 'bang a gong'" message, at least you could try. The modern day point and click just doesn't give you that option. You're confined to the limits of the graphical interface. With text based interfaces your only limitation is verbal.
There was also a little known massively multiplayer online adventure game in the works called Gryphon Tapestry. I was fortunate enough to beta test it for a few weeks before the whole project got shut down. They had some really great ideas on bringing an adventure type game to the online market and it's a damn shame that it wasn't completed.
So because one or two companies show slight gains from last quarter, the entire tech economy is rebounding? Bah... I wonder when media sources would like to give some proof as to recovery, rather than jumping on the optimistic bandwagon in their articles.
Even so, raising prices at the beginning of a rebound might serve to shove us back in the gutter again. People are tighter with money now, especially tech workers, who are the #1 customers for these technologies. I don't think they're willing to give up the money so easily now.
Never seen such a thing on Sony's consoles. They do have something called Dual Shock though. Feedback from force vs. Two Electrical Discharges - I win!
The rumor is that the PC version is going to be released alongside FFXI which is coming out at the same time in Japan and the USA for the PS2 and PC. FFXI is in beta test currently in Japan and they're looking at a late spring or early summer release.
When looking at the Playstation generation of Final Fantasy games, here's what I have to say.
FFVII - Good for your average teenage gamer. Some plot depth, lots of action and bad ass characters.
FFVIII - Good for older gamers who enjoy a deep and meaningful storyline and aren't overly concerned with action and being a bad ass. Get this if you're not afraid to get emotional during a video game.
FFIX - A good mix of styles. It's got the old school action of Final Fantasy games and is set in a more medieval atmosphere (like the original FF games), but has a really compelling storyline that's very touching at the same time.
FFX - Not quite sure yet, but from what I've seen it looks like it's more along the lines of VII as far as storyline goes (which is disappointing to me as I HATE VII). I've heard from most people it's more like VIII, but I have yet to see that.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not funny when you have to spend most of your online time fending off horny guys looking to cyber. It's actually pretty disruptive.
Yeah, generally I'd think the wedding chapel and all is a pretty cute idea. But it just advocates using the game as a medium for picking up on the opposite sex. I don't go out to singles bars with my wife, and I don't want to put up with the same behavior in my gaming.
Not to mention that for a lot of these people their online relations aren't a joke to them even if it may be to the other person involved. That brings up the whole situation of cyber stalking, which I have seen some dead serious cases of in the past.
My argument is simply that online RPG's are not the place for it. Social community games like The Sims Online or Second Life are better suited for this, if that's what you want to do with your online time.
As a married gamer with a wife who also games, I find the idea of advocating in-game romance to be inappropriate.
It's bad enough as it is. Anyone who has either played a female character or hung out with a female in a MMORPG knows that a majority of your time is spent trying to get rid of unwanted would-be suitors. Even saying "She's really my wife out of game. Quit hitting on her, you ass" gets you nowhere with these poor desperate disrespectful kids.
It's to the point that my wife and I have both stopped playing online RPG's. You can try and report harassment, but when 90% of the male population of the game participates in the act, nothing happens about it.
Online RPG's should not be used as hook-up joints. We're there trying to play the game as was intended. Not to listen to a bunch of pathetic teenagers trying to pick up on my wife. It's not what the game is there for and I don't consider it appropriate. If you're that pathetic that you feel you have to pick up women on line try some chat room (Married and Flirting in Yahoo! Chat comes to mind for you losers that must try to pick up married women), or a love shack property in The Sims Online. Don't come disrupt our gaming with your sexed-up crap.
Unfortunately, present day MMORPG designers have considerably less creativity than your average banker. Otherwise they would realize how easy bullet time is to implement.
Obviously you can't slow down the whole world for everyone. Which is why you return to the wonderful world of turn based party-only combat! Take the combat system used in the pioneer MMORPG, The Realm, and add features to bring it up to date.
It's a shame that this kind of combat system would deviate too much from the standard MMORPG template. Otherwise we might have a decent game for once.
I hope you're right. This was one of the few games I had to look forward to. Biblical apocalyptic games never do all that great and unfortunately it's one of my favorite settings for games. Let's hope someone grabs it up for release.
I think there's some money to be made in opening up retro arcades. A step back in time for those of us who grew up in the video arcades of the 80's. You'd have mostly classic games, but some new ones to keep things interesting. Throw some 80's music on the speakers and set up a hot dog stand and you're in business. Anyone want to be my sponsor? I just need the funding...
Also, I think the future of arcade gaming has to do with VR. VR will start to hit the gaming scene again in the next few years. Since the equipment may be too expensive for home users, arcades will pop back up offering people the chance to play them.
And really, arcades aren't dead. Isn't an internet cafe almost like an arcade? Lots of people go there specifically to game. Especially in Asia.
Come play our MMORPG! We're different because we have a creature called fae! All the other MMORPG's call them fairies! *snore*
How about Vampire: the Masquerade? We don't have a horror MMORPG yet.
Maybe Twilight 2000? We don't have a near future post-apocalyptic warfare MMORPG yet.
Nope. We're gonna do D&D cause there just aren't enought medieval fantasy MMORPG's.
(Note: I'll take this entire post back if they're including Ravenloft or Planescape, which I doubt is the case.)
Maybe we'll finally get a decent pirate themed game. Sea Dogs was buggy. Sea Dogs 2 was looking good until it became Pirates of the Caribbean (Blech... Disney). Pirates! still remains the ultimate pirate game.
Anyone tried Tropico 2: Pirate Cove? That's supposed to be pretty decent as well.
"It is curious that they are excluding Star Wars Galaxies -- is that only because they can't because of LucasFilm licensing?"
I'm guessing it's something else. The game is Star Wars and it has been hyped all to hell and back. They *know* it's going to sell massive numbers off the shelf. Whether or not people continue subscribing is a different matter. They're going to get that $12 (extra $12 for people who already play EQ/Planetside/etc) from all those people.
Now, if the game sinks after release and turns out to be a real piece of crap, I think we'll see it in the $21 a month package eventually.
The only reason they're doing it with EQ2 (which is also guaranteed to sell numbers off the shelf) is to make sure all those current EQ subscribers transition over to EQ2.
"Are there a lot of people who have time to play multiple online RPGs?"
This is the best point about multi-game subscriptions. Even back in college (when we have all the time in the world) I didn't have the time to keep up with two MMORPG's. Believe me, I tried. I always found myself eventaully going to one or the other full-time.
I have seen MMORPG's that claim to be for the "casual" gamer, but none live up to the hype. If you don't spend loads of time online, powerleveling your character, then you can't keep up with the world. You never get to participate in the more advanced features. Eventually even hunting becomes impossible as in order to level you need to fight powerful creatures who require party combat to beat. Good luck finding a party, getting equipped, finding a monster, and destroying it in the hour you have before bed.
A game like Planetside may turn out better in this regard. The fast action and game design should let you jump in and out of the game at your leisure and still have a blast. It is a FPS after all.
So I think the only way this will work well is if you offer several different genre's of games. Unfortunately all the rest of the games will just be there when you're taking a break from the RPG.
Since we're now in the 'Make MMORPG's out of popular movies' trend, let me make a few suggestions based on some of the most popular movies of all time.
Citizen Kane
Casablanca
12 Angry Men
Singin' In The Rain
Let it die people... Let it die...
Why are so many of you disappointed about this being 3D? I can say it until I'm blue in the face. Play Gabriel Knight 3. Proof positive that adventure games are even better in 3D. So many more places to hide things. So much more to see. It's like watching a TV show where you have your own camera being able to move around in the scene. Trust me. It's great if done well.
"are there still people out there releasing games on 42 floppies?"
Nope, but there are people releasing games on DVD.
I was a rabid MUD/MMORPG player from '92 to '97. I never got so bad as to blow off classes/appointments to play, but damn near every minute I spent at home was spent in front of an online RPG.
Then I took a look at myself and figured out how much of a loser I was. Toward the end I spent much of my online time pissed off. Games were buggy, the dev team kept changing the rules, griefers were everywhere, everybody was powergaming and not role-playing. I just kept thinking "the next new game won't have these problems". So I became an online RPG hobo. Hopping trains from one game to the next in hopes of a better game. Well, that game never came. I realized that game would never come and that I was an idiot for wasting my time on this crap. So I muttered quite a few choice words at the MMORPG industry and promised that they'd never take my money again. And they haven't...
I'm a gamer deep down and always will be, so this left a void in my life. I still wanted to role-play in a large group, in a fantasy setting. So I took up fantasy LARPing. We run around in the woods for the weekend with padded swords, going on quests, having festivals, playing our characters, and beating the crap out of trolls, skeletons, and each other.
Now, a lot of people look at LARPing as the ultimate stupid geek-fest. Bunch of Tolkien nerds who really think they're wizards or something. All I can say is at least we're outside, socializing with real people (even if they are playing a character), learning real survival skills, and getting real exercise. If it came down to LARPers vs. MMORPG players in the end, the LARPers would inherit the Earth.
I'm hoping as the social ills and false promises of MMORPG's become more clear, the real role-players will join us at LARP and leave the powergamers to their anti-social leveling.
It's about time they cashed in on the lucrative interior designer market. That Bobby guy from the Anna Nicole show will be thrilled I'm sure.
Why not make controllers with features gamers actually care about? Like: Can I hurl this at my TV without it breaking?
Any word on multiplayer capabilities yet? Nihilistic's V:tM game had excellent multiplayer, along with the ability to script add-ons in Java. So anything they didn't put in the game could easily be scripted in by us fans.
There were only two problems with Redemption's multiplayer. 1) Finding players who didn't want to powergame and then get mad and leave when you won't let them. 2) Finding storytellers that didn't just throw a bunch of NPC's in a room and let you beat on them.
Just another classic case of the player base ruining the online aspect of an RPG.
I actually got to play in one game run by some marketing guy at White Wolf. It was proof of how great the multiplayer portion of Redemption actually was.
Troika's not known for doing any multiplayer really, so is there any hope?
Just another prank pulled off by some students at MIT. On the web site you can clearly see a picture of a female standing there at the urinal playing the game. How can she do that? It's a known fact that women do not exist at MIT.
I'm still waiting on that elusive graphical MUSH. MUD's have their modern counterparts in hack n' slash MMORPG's like EQ (and every other MMORPG out today). Now MOO's are getting theirs. When will we get an environment to sit back and really role-play a story instead of being suckered down the path of stat maxing on the leveling treadmill?
For proof of what "modern" adventure games would be check out Gabriel Knight 3 or Starship Titanic.
Gabriel Knight 3 is, in my opinion, the greatest adventure game ever. The graphics are beautiful, the voice acting is excellent (led by Tim Curry as Gabriel Knight), and the story is amazing. I need more adjectives, this game is that great. It is proof that you can take a Sierra adventure game into a 3d environment and have it work extremely well. It ended with a whole setup for GK4, but unfortunately I doubt we'll ever get it.
I mention Starship Titanic because it shows how a text based control interface can still work and be fun. The greatest thing about adventure games was that you could do anything. Even if you got the standard "I don't know how to 'bang a gong'" message, at least you could try. The modern day point and click just doesn't give you that option. You're confined to the limits of the graphical interface. With text based interfaces your only limitation is verbal.
There was also a little known massively multiplayer online adventure game in the works called Gryphon Tapestry. I was fortunate enough to beta test it for a few weeks before the whole project got shut down. They had some really great ideas on bringing an adventure type game to the online market and it's a damn shame that it wasn't completed.
"If you can read this, you're a licensed HAM radio operator."?
D33r MrZ. butts3x0r
U g0tz a k1d d4t 41n7 d01n h1z w3rK r1t3, b1zn0tch! h3 k33p t4lk1n L1k3 h3 41n7 g0tZ n0 c3ntz! WTF? U = p3n1s 1n U aZZ!
sux0rz 2BU! h0p3 y3r br4t g3tz h1z NUTZ ch0ppa 0ff!
-Mr. Demarcus
History Department
So because one or two companies show slight gains from last quarter, the entire tech economy is rebounding? Bah... I wonder when media sources would like to give some proof as to recovery, rather than jumping on the optimistic bandwagon in their articles.
Even so, raising prices at the beginning of a rebound might serve to shove us back in the gutter again. People are tighter with money now, especially tech workers, who are the #1 customers for these technologies. I don't think they're willing to give up the money so easily now.
Never seen such a thing on Sony's consoles. They do have something called Dual Shock though. Feedback from force vs. Two Electrical Discharges - I win!
The rumor is that the PC version is going to be released alongside FFXI which is coming out at the same time in Japan and the USA for the PS2 and PC. FFXI is in beta test currently in Japan and they're looking at a late spring or early summer release.
That would be Anti-Monet graphics. =)
When looking at the Playstation generation of Final Fantasy games, here's what I have to say.
FFVII - Good for your average teenage gamer. Some plot depth, lots of action and bad ass characters.
FFVIII - Good for older gamers who enjoy a deep and meaningful storyline and aren't overly concerned with action and being a bad ass. Get this if you're not afraid to get emotional during a video game.
FFIX - A good mix of styles. It's got the old school action of Final Fantasy games and is set in a more medieval atmosphere (like the original FF games), but has a really compelling storyline that's very touching at the same time.
FFX - Not quite sure yet, but from what I've seen it looks like it's more along the lines of VII as far as storyline goes (which is disappointing to me as I HATE VII). I've heard from most people it's more like VIII, but I have yet to see that.