Originally Posted by envino
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The question as to whether or not these guys know how to create an MMO is largely moot - in my opinion, they did, and they still do. The real question is CAN they? I submit that they cannot.
To create a modern MMO requires a piles of money, and a reasonable assurance to the investors that those millions of dollars will be returned, plus millions more.
There is a perfectly good reason that the newer MMO's all feel the same, because essentially, they are. The goal of a modern-day MMO is to make money, period. In order to make money on the scale that is required, your game has to appeal to a very broad base of gamer, you need subscriptions in the millions, not thousands, or even hundreds of thousands - millions. You absolutely have to build your game to the lowest common denominator - there can be no waiting around, no frustration, no way to fail. The average person (and it has always been this way, more on that in a moment) approaches an MMO like a sitcom episode - they want to be entertained for a short time and then on to something else. WoW does an outstanding job of catering to the millions. Its not the same millions, you play for awhile, you realize after a year or so that there is nothing else, and you quit. Meanwhile, there's a whole new generation of 12 years olds to take your place, and they just rotate through. Almost all gamers have played WoW for awhile.
So here I am. I'm in my 40's, I started out playing good old DnD in my early teens, played MuDs until my 20's until EQ came out, basked in that until it became the same old treadmill, and have been floundering around hoping for the real thing ever since.
But you and I, we're dinosaurs, very nearing extinction. There aren't that many of us around anymore, certainly not enough of us to supply millions of dollars to support the game we want. I want death penalties, I want slow travel, I want difficult leveling, I want weight and food to matter, I want a certain amount of realism that is just too frustrating for the masses.
I have been hoping for a small company to pop up and make the game that i want to play, but i just don't see it happening - which is why i was so excited to find P99. Here it is, in all its glory, my game. I just hope we can keep it going!
I still hold out hope for the future -
Oh, and gamers have always been this way, I knew tons of people back in the day that thought EQ was waaaay too hard and time consuming to play. The bar was just lower in those days. A few hundred thousands subscribers was plenty to make a little money. WoW pretty much changed the whole landscape.
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