"But from a business standpoint, and a fan standpoint, a licensed game that truly breaks the mould could be a game-changer – a money-maker the likes of which the business has never seen."
No MMO game company today is interested in breaking any moulds. To think so is to be either blind or insanely naive (no personal slight just my feelings on the matter). Recent MMO offerings from the "top tier" companies with the money to grab such names has proven this. They may say they want to break moulds, but their efforts and final products show otherwise.
They only want to make a low maintenance themepark game and hope to capture some of WoW's crowd long enough (6 months or so) to pay off the development costs and a little bit of profit. That's a "win" to them. After that they don't really care about the game and if its subscription base drops all the better. they can pull more and more resources off it (not that those resources were doing much more than maintaining in the first). Again, the evidence is right in front of all of us here.
So no, as I thought the first time Wachter wrote the article so it remains still today. Considering the state of MMOs today as they are being shipped, with a couple notable exceptions, the majority of IP fans that are knowledgeable MMO gamers don't want these companies to come within 10 feet of their beloved IPs. They know it's going to be a half-baked, disappointing experience.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
The benefits and problems with licenses have been mentioned by others, so I will rather give my take on the three I have played.
SWG: Was the first one. I struggled to get a grasp on the game system. I tried to play a Medic/Carabineer, but could not find bandages and the other stuff to make me useful outside a hospital and what I found on the vendors was too expensive for me. I also struggled to understand why one carabin was better than the next one. Most of these problems I had with SWG sent me running back to DAoC pretty fast, but I hear many people enjoyed it. I might also have done so if I figured out how to play my character.
AoC: The guild I joined in AoC required every member to read a lot of Howard's stories, so I got a pretty good grasp on the world. The problem I faced was that Funcom tried to make AoC's combat system into a Tekken-style with combo sequences which turned out to be a huge problem. Add to the fact that PvP and Siege combat was heavily promoted, but the world was not designed with that in mind. Sieges were just horribly designed and whoever came up with the idea should be run out of the industry forever.
LotRO: I liked Turbine's approach to the world design with limited interaction with the stars, and the characters storylines taking place on the fringes of the books'. My problem with LotRO was gameplay. Fighting with my hunter was reduced to just hitting 1-2-3-4-1 and waiting for recycled timers with the auto-attacks between styled attacks to mess up timing and being annoying. Also, Turbine placed too many quests in the game, so it was rare to be able to put a group together for more than 30 minutes before someone left because they were working on other quests. With a better combat system, I might have played LotRO still, but it became too repetitive and boring in the long run.
Comments
"But from a business standpoint, and a fan standpoint, a licensed game that truly breaks the mould could be a game-changer – a money-maker the likes of which the business has never seen."
No MMO game company today is interested in breaking any moulds. To think so is to be either blind or insanely naive (no personal slight just my feelings on the matter). Recent MMO offerings from the "top tier" companies with the money to grab such names has proven this. They may say they want to break moulds, but their efforts and final products show otherwise.
They only want to make a low maintenance themepark game and hope to capture some of WoW's crowd long enough (6 months or so) to pay off the development costs and a little bit of profit. That's a "win" to them. After that they don't really care about the game and if its subscription base drops all the better. they can pull more and more resources off it (not that those resources were doing much more than maintaining in the first). Again, the evidence is right in front of all of us here.
So no, as I thought the first time Wachter wrote the article so it remains still today. Considering the state of MMOs today as they are being shipped, with a couple notable exceptions, the majority of IP fans that are knowledgeable MMO gamers don't want these companies to come within 10 feet of their beloved IPs. They know it's going to be a half-baked, disappointing experience.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
I think good IP MMO should follow F2P trend. No fans have enough time and money to play the game forever even the hardcore ones.
The benefits and problems with licenses have been mentioned by others, so I will rather give my take on the three I have played.
SWG: Was the first one. I struggled to get a grasp on the game system. I tried to play a Medic/Carabineer, but could not find bandages and the other stuff to make me useful outside a hospital and what I found on the vendors was too expensive for me. I also struggled to understand why one carabin was better than the next one. Most of these problems I had with SWG sent me running back to DAoC pretty fast, but I hear many people enjoyed it. I might also have done so if I figured out how to play my character.
AoC: The guild I joined in AoC required every member to read a lot of Howard's stories, so I got a pretty good grasp on the world. The problem I faced was that Funcom tried to make AoC's combat system into a Tekken-style with combo sequences which turned out to be a huge problem. Add to the fact that PvP and Siege combat was heavily promoted, but the world was not designed with that in mind. Sieges were just horribly designed and whoever came up with the idea should be run out of the industry forever.
LotRO: I liked Turbine's approach to the world design with limited interaction with the stars, and the characters storylines taking place on the fringes of the books'. My problem with LotRO was gameplay. Fighting with my hunter was reduced to just hitting 1-2-3-4-1 and waiting for recycled timers with the auto-attacks between styled attacks to mess up timing and being annoying. Also, Turbine placed too many quests in the game, so it was rare to be able to put a group together for more than 30 minutes before someone left because they were working on other quests. With a better combat system, I might have played LotRO still, but it became too repetitive and boring in the long run.