#21
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#22
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This thread is about future games. And in all likelihood, they are incapable. Witness EQ1 as it exists today, EQ2, and what became of Vanguard. imo, it's pretty clear that they have been moving in the wrong direction for a long time.
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Don't be a Kleat...
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#23
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Your post implies that I am an unthinking, emotive ostrich. The fact of the matter is that I have thought and written about this very subject several times over the years, and had exchanges with many other thoughtful players on related topics. Your assertions do not jibe with their well-considered opinions. Furthermore, I have personally written Smed twice to discuss removal or changing of the death penalty in VG. Trust me. He doesn't get it.
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~ give me a large old school fantasy MMORPG, make it PVE, and hold the voice chat ~
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#24
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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. | ||
Last edited by envino; 04-30-2012 at 04:02 PM..
Reason: added....
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#25
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<The Mystical Order> 60 Monk Silentone | |||
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#26
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~ give me a large old school fantasy MMORPG, make it PVE, and hold the voice chat ~
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#27
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Well, that's exactly my point. At some moment a bunch of suits walked into the room and said "we need more subscribers, your game is too hard, change it - make it more like wow or you're fired".
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#28
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MMO's are economically feasible. The problem is corporations don't view games like players do. The suits want to invest money into something that returns that money for many, many years as a veritible money stream. An awesome MMO will possibly last for 10 years. We don't know yet because while EQ is now 13 years old how much real profit is it producing? WoW is almost 8 and I think we can assume it will still product profit for several more years.
The suits see WoW as what they want in an MMO. What they don't get is that it came from a company that built games for several years and had an existing fanbase that was international in scope. Wow may be a game that never gets replicated. That doesn't mean games can't be made that are just as good or better and make good money. There are games out there that are smaller and making money for their owners. The problem is that the money men want WoW every time. The business world is insane right now. It used to be if you invested x dollars and made 2x that back in a few years you did good. Now they want multiple X dollars back or the investment is a failure? I think the best games are going to come from smaller teams of builders who create their worlds before they get the big money. Once they have a good product ready for the final polishing the money men can step in and spend the big $$ needed to market it, put together the CS teams, and do the expensive stuff. Good grief, the technology today to build a good game is there and it's not crazy expensive. You don't need cutting edge graphics. You need content and design. Seriously, look at the WoW graphics. Then look at the EQ2 graphics back in 04. They were so awesome few people had the power to run the PC to play them at their best setting. That's what killed EQ2. The game was good. It was just that too many people didn't have enough PC to play the game at any acceptable mode while they could play WoW at good or high settings. Let's be honest. We could take EQ's graphics and classes, mix it with any game world we want, and somebody could build a new world for a fraction of what it would cost to build a EQ Next or some really heavy duty WoW killer. If the content is good and the game playable and fun, it'll make money. | ||
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#29
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He did chase WoW dollars, but not in a way that leveraged the strengths of his own game while doing away with some of the barriors to play that WoW succeeded in bringing down. He threw the baby out with the bath water. Why? Because he didn't and still DOESN'T understand what he had. EQ Next will be utter crap.
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~ give me a large old school fantasy MMORPG, make it PVE, and hold the voice chat ~
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#30
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Sad, sad, sad....
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