Games. I tried migrating towards consoles, but certain key games are still PC-specific.
Same. Games, particularly those I prefer playing with keyboard and mouse. Old dog/new tricks kind of thing. Everything else (MS office compatibility with the office) is sort of a nice to have.
Peter F Hamilton already predicted this in 2002 with Misspent Youth. He went further though to predict that not only would revenue-generating media die off, it would pull with it media quality. As such the only good stuff would be the classics:)
The numbers aren't important unless...
on
A Million Zunes Sold
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
You separate how many sold THROUGH (to consumers) versus how many were sold IN (to retailers)
I thought anyone who's ever owned both has tried this. Heck, I did this a few years ago. It's fine for light-impact walking, but you're much better off taking less time and using it smarter on an elliptical, stair, or an incline treadmill. Of course, since I don't do any of that, maybe I shouldn't talk:)
No cash cow survives contact with business needs. LoTRO is built within a world that does not need to end, if Turbine doesn't want it to. It CAN end though, just as any other persistent world does.
And even the LoTR story doesn't have a clean ending. There's always more going on in Middle Earth.
Those utilize MMO-like components, but momentarily, for short periods (except Huxley, but that's not out yet). Your point is the same though. There's a lot beyond WoW/diku, even today (Endless Ages, ATiTD, SL, Habbo, Club Penguin, etc).
The problem isn't that these games don't exist. It's that most players in the genre prefer them. Eve's an awesome game, but it'd only break 1 million if WoW breaks 20 million. It's indicative of market forces.
So is this a rant against non-creativity, or rather a lament against popularity?
I'd like to know what about this article hasn't been said countless times already since every prior MMO (both before and after the coining of that term) that has come before.
Seriously, we need new rants, and VG is not rant-worthy. Nobody expected more of it than it delivered, and anyone who was following the development knew it was being designed for the other type of player that quit EQ1, the type that didn't think the game was hard enough.
VG does not set a bad precedent because it was never going to have any lasting effect on the genre. The entire concept of it was niche. And they were forced to launch at the absolute worst time to launch a non-IP-based MMO without a really big following. I don't think they were destined for failure. I'm hoping they have enough accounts to stay profitable. But I also don't think VG is going to change how anyone does anything in this genre because at it's heart, it's a five year old design.
Tell me how all of the endgame zones are any different?
And I talked about Battlegrounds. And earlier about the commerce of AH (not included in this article because it was already long enough:) These are different from round robin luck-based equipment advancement in MC>BWL>AQ or ZG. Having spent significant time in those places, I don't see the difference. Once you know the zone, it's just about leaching from it.
Unfortunately, the part quoted for this submission to/. doesn't connote that. I would have picked a different passage because I think the Blizz comment is taken out of context and prompts people such as yourself to misunderstand it so much you're not really interested in whatever else is said in the piece. Quite understandable. If someone called my kid ugly, I wouldn't be interested in hearing their full explanation either:)
If you read the whole article, you'd see where I don't condemn this approach to development nor Blizzard for bringing it. People love this stuff, in huge numbers one cannot ignore. So it's financially responsible of companies to try to supply for this demand. Blizzards innovation was lowering the barrier of entry and being able to hit a global reach no other company has ever been able to match.
All I'm saying is that there's more things to try.
Actually, the point of the TFA was that old ideas are notdead ideas. You raise good points about open worlds affected by players, but your talking from precedent only. That makes sense of course, since what else do we measure things by? But when you consider the precedence of an idea, don't ignore when it was executed (was it before its time?) nor how it was executed (did it actually pull of its intent?)
Like Sage said, it's not really EQ2 vs EQ1. I personally think WoW is more of a sequel to EQ1 than EQ2 was. Therefore, even without WoW, I doubt EQ2 would do much better or worse than it's doing.
As it stands, today, EQ2 is a pretty solid experience *as of Publish 19*. Starting your class right away means you don't have to repeat Base classes and Sub-classes for every REAL class you wanted to play in the first place. This alone is a huge and beneficial change to EQ2, and the implementation is very fun. I basically bought the $19.99 EQ2 just to play on Test as of the first 19 patch. I'm eager to migrate over to Live now, but I'm glad I didn't try and play the Live game that exists. It basically was the reason I chose WoW in November 2004.
But otherwise, what makes EQ2 completely unique from WoW remains. An actual crafting system for one (WoW is only about resource collection), as well as a more robust player-directed economy. Neither of these systems make EQ2 a particularly mass-marketable game though. They're there for a bit more hardcore folks at a time when the biggest growth in the genre is with casual diversion-seeking gamers.
WoW facilitates that extremely well. Remove that from the equation though and you'd still have Guild Wars doing that. Remove that and I doubt the genre would have gained millions of new players in 2005, particularly in the U.S.
Immersion is niche. When MMORPGs started becoming more GAME is when the genre really started to grow in appeal for more gamers. EQ2 was not built for that. It was built for veterans. Hence, its size is what it is regardless of the competition.
For the most part, I think your observations are straight on. I tried to be fair about that. I hate to say it, but you may have been playing when they had some huge network issues two weeks ago and last week. It certainly doesn't excuse the game that you experienced. It just could be more of case of unfortunate timing.
But that's just about the latency issues. The game itself is still riddled with bugs and holes that have existed since launch, and the new combat system is all fighting the old socioeconomic stability the game had achieved.
However, even with all that, there's a lot of fun to be had. I just wouldn't approach SWG wanting to focus too much on one thing. No system is deep enough to be the sole activity at this point, since even Trader Munitions (Armor and Weapon) have a hard time selling their goods. But when taken altogether, it's still an impressive game in its breath.
Ugh, forgot I had 'HTML formatted' selected. Sorry for the illegible block!
Here's how it should have looked:
I take a slightly different view.
There's a difference between substantially losing players in a short period of time, as is happening now, versus steady decline of subscriptions over a much longer one. It's a Peak/Valley view versus a Slope one I'd guess. In any case, here's the problem:
Over a long period of time, SWG was probably losing more players than gaining. This is because the game had a fairly niche appeal. 200k-300k is nothing to sneeze at, but while some companies only see those numbers as a far off distant dream, SOE surpassed those handily with their flagship game. In theory, their "expertise" *combined* with one of the largest consumer licenses in the world, should have resulted in at *least* the 515k subscriptions they capped with in EQ1.
They didn't. Not by a long shot. I'm careful to note that the source of numbers we all bandy about is generally questionable, but even just going by MMOGchart.com, SWG hit a plateau, and never really migrated. Then SOE stopped reporting numbers on a per game basis anyway, but that's an aside.
They have had to have dropped at least a few million in dollars, and countless thousands of man hours in development over the six months (estimated) they spent on the NGE. Just getting something like this *started* requires major approvals within the company, much less with the licensor. A few hints have travelled the webs on how it happened, but regardless, this is a hugely tremendous effort not taken lightly.
They knew they'd lose people. They probably didn't think they'd lose as many. However, we here, and in most places, really have no idea how many people they actually lost. So we can't really know whether their bet paid off until they either announce record new subscriptions, or close the game:)
But however it turns out, they didn't just hack out some code tweaks. They did this major overhaul because they projected through the next few years and realized at some point in the near future, they'd fall under the necessary revenue to pay all the fees owed.
So close the game and start firing people or take a major chance at pissing off some players. This was not an easy decision for them, and I'm still surprised they went ahead and did it.
I take a slightly different view.
There's a difference between substantially losing players in a short period of time, as is happening now, versus steady decline of subscriptions over a much longer one. It's a Peak/Valley view versus a Slope one I'd guess. In any case, here's the problem:
Over a long period of time, SWG was probably losing more players than gaining. This is because the game had a fairly niche appeal. 200k-300k is nothing to sneeze at, but while some companies only see those numbers as a far off distant dream, SOE surpassed those handily with their flagship game. In theory, their "expertise" *combined* with one of the largest consumer licenses in the world, should have resulted in at *least* the 515k subscriptions they capped with in EQ1.
They didn't. Not by a long shot. I'm careful to note that the source of numbers we all bandy about is generally questionable, but even just going by MMOGchart.com, SWG hit a plateau, and never really migrated. Then SOE stopped reporting numbers on a per game basis anyway, but that's an aside.
They have had to have dropped at least a few million in dollars, and countless thousands of man hours in development over the six months (estimated) they spent on the NGE. Just getting something like this *started* requires major approvals within the company, much less with the licensor. A few hints have travelled the webs on how it happened, but regardless, this is a hugely tremendous effort not taken lightly.
They knew they'd lose people. They probably didn't think they'd lose as many. However, we here, and in most places, really have no idea how many people they actually lost. So we can't really know whether their bet paid off until they either announce record new subscriptions, or close the game:)
But however it turns out, they didn't just hack out some code tweaks. They did this major overhaul because they projected through the next few years and realized at some point in the near future, they'd fall under the necessary revenue to pay all the fees owed.
So close the game and start firing people or take a major chance at pissing off some players. This was not an easy decision for them, and I'm still surprised they went ahead and did it.
To be honest, I actually get this is a big underlying problem with the changeover to a traditional Diku-inspired game. However, the reason I played this down here is because this transition has been happening for awhile. Becoming EQ-in-space is not really caused by the NGE. Rather, it was things like the contrived quest-based adventuring on Kashyyyk, the increase in quality of dropped items, the introduction of the Combat Level system at all. This is all critical to understanding what SWG is becoming; however, I didn't see them as specifically caused by the NGE.
I did mention it after describing the two main elements I feel make up the NGE. I was going to give it more relevance there, but realized it could be an entirely different article altogether. At 5,600 words, I felt there was enough there to be read already :
I WISH beta processes were more harrowing to get into. Without a more stringent front end, we'll just perpetuate this cycle of useless noise drowning out any real hope of relevant reporting.
There needs to be a good back end reporting system too. Forums do not cut it. They may work for a few hundred testers, of which maybe 75% of them would read the forums and 50% actually post. However, when the game starts stress testing the servers, the players will generate much more noise than actual signal on the forums. Most of this noise will be rehashing long standing bugs or incomplete features, requiring even other testers to skim posts so much they may miss something relevant.
In my opinion, all reporting should be done through ingame interface. And, the reporting should be based on the developers pushing specific agendas for specific results, at least most of the time. There is a lot to be gained by allowing your testers free run of the experience. This helps generate discussion about what is fun versus what is not. However, without specific focus on features and systems, some bugs and incompleteness can either never be reported, or doesn't get reported sufficiently enough to prioritize it being fixed prior to launch.
As a die-hard MMORPGer, I swallowed the $14.95/mo fee as I have for countless games of questionable worth:)
However, I also had very low hopes for the game based on what I saw at the two last E3s. I'm a convert, to both WoW and EQ2. The games are very similar. I can play only one, because I have time for only one, at best. But I tried to do a side-by-side comparison of them both.
I feel SWG had a similar ability to pull in new players, but I emphasize "had". Nowadays it's just another MMORPG in a sea of them. That will change with the Jump to Lightspeed expansion, but we won't know whether it'll change that much until January.
I see roleplayed acting and roleplaying differently.
Roleplayed acting would involve not insta-learning all of the languages, picking a character personality and staying within it at all times. Of course, this is something I'm decidedly not.
Roleplaying is about picking a role in the virtual world and performing the functions involved. And it becomes even more roleplaying when that role isn't just a shade of outputting damage.
There are Image Designers, Musicians, Politicans and Dancers at all, and enjoyed by more players than I would originally have bet on caring. They are playing roles that are different than those out seeking action through hunting.
Even if they are talking about Iraq and the Cowboys at the same time:)
Ah, thanks for correcting the droids part. Proves that even the best intents can still provide faulting research:)
My beef with Jedi isn't so much with PvP as they're so prevalent at all. When I see Jedi light sabers in the Coronet Starport, I expect 100s of Stormtroopers to show up. But they never do.
Slashdot Mirror
Games. I tried migrating towards consoles, but certain key games are still PC-specific.
Same. Games, particularly those I prefer playing with keyboard and mouse. Old dog/new tricks kind of thing. Everything else (MS office compatibility with the office) is sort of a nice to have.
Peter F Hamilton already predicted this in 2002 with Misspent Youth. He went further though to predict that not only would revenue-generating media die off, it would pull with it media quality. As such the only good stuff would be the classics :)
You separate how many sold THROUGH (to consumers) versus how many were sold IN (to retailers)
I thought anyone who's ever owned both has tried this. Heck, I did this a few years ago. It's fine for light-impact walking, but you're much better off taking less time and using it smarter on an elliptical, stair, or an incline treadmill. Of course, since I don't do any of that, maybe I shouldn't talk :)
No cash cow survives contact with business needs. LoTRO is built within a world that does not need to end, if Turbine doesn't want it to. It CAN end though, just as any other persistent world does. And even the LoTR story doesn't have a clean ending. There's always more going on in Middle Earth.
Those utilize MMO-like components, but momentarily, for short periods (except Huxley, but that's not out yet). Your point is the same though. There's a lot beyond WoW/diku, even today (Endless Ages, ATiTD, SL, Habbo, Club Penguin, etc).
The problem isn't that these games don't exist. It's that most players in the genre prefer them. Eve's an awesome game, but it'd only break 1 million if WoW breaks 20 million. It's indicative of market forces.
So is this a rant against non-creativity, or rather a lament against popularity?
I'd like to know what about this article hasn't been said countless times already since every prior MMO (both before and after the coining of that term) that has come before.
Seriously, we need new rants, and VG is not rant-worthy. Nobody expected more of it than it delivered, and anyone who was following the development knew it was being designed for the other type of player that quit EQ1, the type that didn't think the game was hard enough .
VG does not set a bad precedent because it was never going to have any lasting effect on the genre. The entire concept of it was niche. And they were forced to launch at the absolute worst time to launch a non-IP-based MMO without a really big following. I don't think they were destined for failure. I'm hoping they have enough accounts to stay profitable. But I also don't think VG is going to change how anyone does anything in this genre because at it's heart, it's a five year old design.
Am I reading the same PDF everyone else is/did? Page 7, Life Sciences section, Line 26.13 clearly includes "Evolution".
http://ifap.ed.gov/dpcletters/attachments/GEN060 6A.pdf
What am I missing here?
Tell me how all of the endgame zones are any different? And I talked about Battlegrounds. And earlier about the commerce of AH (not included in this article because it was already long enough :) These are different from round robin luck-based equipment advancement in MC>BWL>AQ or ZG. Having spent significant time in those places, I don't see the difference. Once you know the zone, it's just about leaching from it.
Unfortunately, the part quoted for this submission to /. doesn't connote that. I would have picked a different passage because I think the Blizz comment is taken out of context and prompts people such as yourself to misunderstand it so much you're not really interested in whatever else is said in the piece. Quite understandable. If someone called my kid ugly, I wouldn't be interested in hearing their full explanation either :)
If you read the whole article, you'd see where I don't condemn this approach to development nor Blizzard for bringing it. People love this stuff, in huge numbers one cannot ignore. So it's financially responsible of companies to try to supply for this demand. Blizzards innovation was lowering the barrier of entry and being able to hit a global reach no other company has ever been able to match.
All I'm saying is that there's more things to try.
Actually, the point of the TFA was that old ideas are not dead ideas. You raise good points about open worlds affected by players, but your talking from precedent only. That makes sense of course, since what else do we measure things by? But when you consider the precedence of an idea, don't ignore when it was executed (was it before its time?) nor how it was executed (did it actually pull of its intent?)
Like Sage said, it's not really EQ2 vs EQ1. I personally think WoW is more of a sequel to EQ1 than EQ2 was. Therefore, even without WoW, I doubt EQ2 would do much better or worse than it's doing.
:)
As it stands, today, EQ2 is a pretty solid experience *as of Publish 19*. Starting your class right away means you don't have to repeat Base classes and Sub-classes for every REAL class you wanted to play in the first place. This alone is a huge and beneficial change to EQ2, and the implementation is very fun. I basically bought the $19.99 EQ2 just to play on Test as of the first 19 patch. I'm eager to migrate over to Live now, but I'm glad I didn't try and play the Live game that exists. It basically was the reason I chose WoW in November 2004.
But otherwise, what makes EQ2 completely unique from WoW remains. An actual crafting system for one (WoW is only about resource collection), as well as a more robust player-directed economy. Neither of these systems make EQ2 a particularly mass-marketable game though. They're there for a bit more hardcore folks at a time when the biggest growth in the genre is with casual diversion-seeking gamers.
WoW facilitates that extremely well. Remove that from the equation though and you'd still have Guild Wars doing that. Remove that and I doubt the genre would have gained millions of new players in 2005, particularly in the U.S.
Immersion is niche. When MMORPGs started becoming more GAME is when the genre really started to grow in appeal for more gamers. EQ2 was not built for that. It was built for veterans. Hence, its size is what it is regardless of the competition.
In my opinion, of course
For the most part, I think your observations are straight on. I tried to be fair about that. I hate to say it, but you may have been playing when they had some huge network issues two weeks ago and last week. It certainly doesn't excuse the game that you experienced. It just could be more of case of unfortunate timing.
:)
But that's just about the latency issues. The game itself is still riddled with bugs and holes that have existed since launch, and the new combat system is all fighting the old socioeconomic stability the game had achieved.
However, even with all that, there's a lot of fun to be had. I just wouldn't approach SWG wanting to focus too much on one thing. No system is deep enough to be the sole activity at this point, since even Trader Munitions (Armor and Weapon) have a hard time selling their goods. But when taken altogether, it's still an impressive game in its breath.
If you can dodge the bugs
Just an FYI, but this is the link to TH's confirmation. Not sure why it didn't work from my blog entry, but it should now.
Ugh, forgot I had 'HTML formatted' selected. Sorry for the illegible block!
:)
Here's how it should have looked:
I take a slightly different view.
There's a difference between substantially losing players in a short period of time, as is happening now, versus steady decline of subscriptions over a much longer one. It's a Peak/Valley view versus a Slope one I'd guess. In any case, here's the problem:
Over a long period of time, SWG was probably losing more players than gaining. This is because the game had a fairly niche appeal. 200k-300k is nothing to sneeze at, but while some companies only see those numbers as a far off distant dream, SOE surpassed those handily with their flagship game. In theory, their "expertise" *combined* with one of the largest consumer licenses in the world, should have resulted in at *least* the 515k subscriptions they capped with in EQ1.
They didn't. Not by a long shot. I'm careful to note that the source of numbers we all bandy about is generally questionable, but even just going by MMOGchart.com, SWG hit a plateau, and never really migrated. Then SOE stopped reporting numbers on a per game basis anyway, but that's an aside.
They have had to have dropped at least a few million in dollars, and countless thousands of man hours in development over the six months (estimated) they spent on the NGE. Just getting something like this *started* requires major approvals within the company, much less with the licensor. A few hints have travelled the webs on how it happened, but regardless, this is a hugely tremendous effort not taken lightly.
They knew they'd lose people. They probably didn't think they'd lose as many. However, we here, and in most places, really have no idea how many people they actually lost. So we can't really know whether their bet paid off until they either announce record new subscriptions, or close the game
But however it turns out, they didn't just hack out some code tweaks. They did this major overhaul because they projected through the next few years and realized at some point in the near future, they'd fall under the necessary revenue to pay all the fees owed.
So close the game and start firing people or take a major chance at pissing off some players. This was not an easy decision for them, and I'm still surprised they went ahead and did it.
I take a slightly different view. There's a difference between substantially losing players in a short period of time, as is happening now, versus steady decline of subscriptions over a much longer one. It's a Peak/Valley view versus a Slope one I'd guess. In any case, here's the problem: Over a long period of time, SWG was probably losing more players than gaining. This is because the game had a fairly niche appeal. 200k-300k is nothing to sneeze at, but while some companies only see those numbers as a far off distant dream, SOE surpassed those handily with their flagship game. In theory, their "expertise" *combined* with one of the largest consumer licenses in the world, should have resulted in at *least* the 515k subscriptions they capped with in EQ1. They didn't. Not by a long shot. I'm careful to note that the source of numbers we all bandy about is generally questionable, but even just going by MMOGchart.com, SWG hit a plateau, and never really migrated. Then SOE stopped reporting numbers on a per game basis anyway, but that's an aside. They have had to have dropped at least a few million in dollars, and countless thousands of man hours in development over the six months (estimated) they spent on the NGE. Just getting something like this *started* requires major approvals within the company, much less with the licensor. A few hints have travelled the webs on how it happened, but regardless, this is a hugely tremendous effort not taken lightly. They knew they'd lose people. They probably didn't think they'd lose as many. However, we here, and in most places, really have no idea how many people they actually lost. So we can't really know whether their bet paid off until they either announce record new subscriptions, or close the game :)
But however it turns out, they didn't just hack out some code tweaks. They did this major overhaul because they projected through the next few years and realized at some point in the near future, they'd fall under the necessary revenue to pay all the fees owed.
So close the game and start firing people or take a major chance at pissing off some players. This was not an easy decision for them, and I'm still surprised they went ahead and did it.
To be honest, I actually get this is a big underlying problem with the changeover to a traditional Diku-inspired game. However, the reason I played this down here is because this transition has been happening for awhile. Becoming EQ-in-space is not really caused by the NGE. Rather, it was things like the contrived quest-based adventuring on Kashyyyk, the increase in quality of dropped items, the introduction of the Combat Level system at all. This is all critical to understanding what SWG is becoming; however, I didn't see them as specifically caused by the NGE.
I did mention it after describing the two main elements I feel make up the NGE. I was going to give it more relevance there, but realized it could be an entirely different article altogether. At 5,600 words, I felt there was enough there to be read already :
I WISH beta processes were more harrowing to get into. Without a more stringent front end, we'll just perpetuate this cycle of useless noise drowning out any real hope of relevant reporting.
From here:
There needs to be a good back end reporting system too. Forums do not cut it. They may work for a few hundred testers, of which maybe 75% of them would read the forums and 50% actually post. However, when the game starts stress testing the servers, the players will generate much more noise than actual signal on the forums. Most of this noise will be rehashing long standing bugs or incomplete features, requiring even other testers to skim posts so much they may miss something relevant.
In my opinion, all reporting should be done through ingame interface. And, the reporting should be based on the developers pushing specific agendas for specific results, at least most of the time. There is a lot to be gained by allowing your testers free run of the experience. This helps generate discussion about what is fun versus what is not. However, without specific focus on features and systems, some bugs and incompleteness can either never be reported, or doesn't get reported sufficiently enough to prioritize it being fixed prior to launch.
However, I also had very low hopes for the game based on what I saw at the two last E3s. I'm a convert, to both WoW and EQ2. The games are very similar. I can play only one, because I have time for only one, at best. But I tried to do a side-by-side comparison of them both.
If anyone's interested, head on over to here.
EQ2 launch day was ok, but the succeeding three days of four hour downtimes and uber patches marred it a bit :)
I feel SWG had a similar ability to pull in new players, but I emphasize "had". Nowadays it's just another MMORPG in a sea of them. That will change with the Jump to Lightspeed expansion, but we won't know whether it'll change that much until January.
I see roleplayed acting and roleplaying differently. Roleplayed acting would involve not insta-learning all of the languages, picking a character personality and staying within it at all times. Of course, this is something I'm decidedly not. Roleplaying is about picking a role in the virtual world and performing the functions involved. And it becomes even more roleplaying when that role isn't just a shade of outputting damage. There are Image Designers, Musicians, Politicans and Dancers at all, and enjoyed by more players than I would originally have bet on caring. They are playing roles that are different than those out seeking action through hunting. Even if they are talking about Iraq and the Cowboys at the same time :)
Ah, thanks for correcting the droids part. Proves that even the best intents can still provide faulting research :)
My beef with Jedi isn't so much with PvP as they're so prevalent at all. When I see Jedi light sabers in the Coronet Starport, I expect 100s of Stormtroopers to show up. But they never do.