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Star Wars Stumble Points to Free, Open Future for Online Worlds
DeaconX
Member UncommonPosts: 3,062
If there's one thing BioWare Austin/EA did to it's credit, it's exposing something that I and MANY others have been saying for a long time... and thankfully the big names are finally getting it:
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/11/future-of-mmo-games/
[mod edit - please do not copy articles in their entirety. excerpts are OK!]
Why do I write, create, fantasize, dream and daydream about other worlds? Because I hate what humanity does with this one.
BOYCOTTING EA / ORIGIN going forward.
Comments
Well I think this article isn't so much about the payment plans, but rather the design direction of MMO's and how it no longer pays to create a themepark MMO, try to keep up the content and expect to hold paying subsribers for a long time.
BOYCOTTING EA / ORIGIN going forward.
I doubt we will see another $200-400 million MMO investment any time soon given the financial disaster of SWTOR. I think themepark MMOs are going to have to change their financial strategy because once you run through the content, it's effectively over. SWTOR failed on open world PvP (Ilum, anyone?), which is one of the best ways to maintain long-term subs in a themepark MMO. The only other option is to hope and pray that the themepark MMO re-creates the subs that WoW had at its peak, a long-shot at best (which is what SWTOR's management hoped for). Funcom's multiple MMO themepark failures as well as the failure of DCUO with its arcade style combat system suggests that themeparks are just not working outside of WoW.
Sandbox MMOs have the potential to keep players subscribed for a very long time and thus the financial model works. The biggest downside to sandbox MMOs is that most require substantial number of players online (a chicken/egg problem) and usually involve a lot of PvP activity like Eve, which also turns off a lot of players.
If you think about the optimistic point of view, we could see better sandbox MMOs in the future and fewer themeparks. No one has really created a AAA-sandbox MMO in the last 5 years.
The Article: Thempark bad. Sandbox goooooddd
They are only 8-10 months behind the curve of these forums...
Taru-Gallante-Blood elf-Elysean-Kelari-Crime Fighting-Imperial Agent
Agreed, I think a lot of people are watching new titles like ArcheAge and Black Desert and there's a space one I forget the name of at the moment. Let's hope they do a great job and sell well.
Personally, I'm still waiting for a truly great hybrid sandbox/themepark MMORPG with a strong toolset allowing the community to create content with a great system to ensure only the cream of the crop actually makes it into playable content of the game, essentially allowing the creative and talented members in the community to make sure players never run out of stuff to enjoy.
BOYCOTTING EA / ORIGIN going forward.
They just can't make a mmo anymore.
Uo was good
E & b got scrapped
Daoc they didn't make they bought in
War had some promise but was badly mis managed and hampered by some bad "add more wow" design decisions.
Swtor is the worst big studio mmo ever built and also the most expensive.
Still sad about that one... SO much potential... I almost wish they'd throw up a kickstarter for an E&B2
BOYCOTTING EA / ORIGIN going forward.
Yes. I was playing Kingdom of Drakkar long time ago. It was $2 per hour. I have to limit myself to like 2 hours a day just not to break the bank.
i dont live in asia, sorry, i dont remember that happening to me
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
I wouldn't mind such a policy on western mmos, providing the price was fair. E.g you pay hourly, but if you say 3 hours per day it works out cheaper than sub. Seems a fairer model to me, the sub model casual and average players are subsidizing the hardcore / unemployed / content locusts, everyone pays the same money but the 12 hour a day guy gets way more dev attention with endgame development and what have you.
Nice to see it , and this is one of the reason after seeing just how shallow a game SWTOR was , specifically the linearity of planet flowchart gameplay to the fact they couldn't even make Illum work at all , that I hoped as did many others SWTOR would fail.
And it has failed in EA's eyes , investors and financials etc. Now I'm hoping it fails in its FTP attempt after the initial rush and holidays are over.
The harder SWTOR fails the more it makes sure no publisher will spend 200-300 million on a mmorpg and pay more attention to voice acting cut scenes than making a virtual world for actual gameplay.
Whether it broke even or made a bit of money , EA expected , and Bioware SAID it would compete with WoW for sub numbers.
So yes , it has failed for the amount of money it was predicted to make them.
Good.
Maybe the next wave of mmorpg's will have day/night cycles , weather , etc. Living breathing worlds that can be pseduo amusement park/sandbox style with much more openness. I don't mind a hybrid.
SWTOR was going to an amusement park and being told which rides in which order you had to ride.
Again , EQ had day/night cycles and could make it rain and snow in 98.
SWTOR had voices for its $$$.
Good to see any press pointing out why EA/Bioware didn't get it.
Pay by the hour? Ouch...
On another note, anyone following The Repopulation? It sounds like it could be really good, but could end up being another Earthrise as well.
REPOP is the one I'm most interested in.
To me the question has never been "guided tour themepark" OR "world simulator." I rather see the good parts from both that work and people want to do incorporated into a game.
REPOP is a sandbox game with developers who are confident enough to try to be inclusive of different playstyles. From themeparks they have taken quests (called missions here) and kicked them up a notch by customizing them to the individual depending on what he/she has done before. And this isn't just a token, they seem to be spending a lot of time creating these "guided stories" so that youy can have fun following them if that's how you like to play.
They also have 2 established factions with room for players to create a third one that will be more like a coalition of many mini factions--complete with player-created cities, etc.
But back to SWTOR...
SWTOR didn't fail as a sub model MMO because they couldn't pump-out the content fast enough to sate the content locust as the article implies (nor is the sub model necessarily dead for that matter.) It just embraced the dated "leashed" WOW-like model with just some badly implemented token areas for player-created fun--namely Ilum. It was obvious to all of us who were there that they just tried to stem the flow by desperately creating more leashed content like flashpoints and daily quests, while totally ignoring the one area that could have generated some permanence and player-generated fun. They even publicly threw in the towel on Ilum and mumbled something about needing to redesign it...much later on.
They blew it because they presumed to tell us what we should like and didn't really pay attention to what we actually want to do. The only thing we can take from the failure of SWTOR is that EA/Bioware blew it by choosing the "WOW in space" model. It turns out we're bored with that type of MMO...who knew? ... Oh wait, we did.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Lol could hardly make it through this article.. Tells you the wrong people control and operate this industry and they have destroyed it...
The reason these games are declining so fast... is not because of lack of content.. its because OF THE CONTENT and how it is portrayed and with all due respect.. its complete crap....
So yeah... people arent bored, they are SICK OF CRAP...
The more Smedley shit i read, starts giving me bowel movements... this guy is truley clueless.. Good luck on PS2 tomorrow Smedley... about a week later everyone will be dumping that crap too
Regards,
Mike Cackle
My YouTube Channel
Wow still does in China.
In fact I played ;eridian 59 in 1996 and it had monthly fees. I do remember something about UO charging it for a while though (but I might be wrong, never played it and it was a long time ago).
Hourly payment was never really standard anywhere and it still exist.
I really dont mind B2P and F2P games, but in this case EA saw the game doing a lot worse than expected and they decided it must be the payment model. It really isnt, the game needs a complete revamp but that will cost a lot of money that EA wont want to pay.
Really, payment model is not the important thing about MMOs, with good gameplay it is no problem with any model as long as people dont have to fork out more than 25 bucks a month. TOR just dont have enough multiplayer content and what it have isnt massive enough. And few people want their sidequests in cutscenes. Heck, I rather not have sidequests at all myself, but if I must I dont want to listen to another reason for me to kill 10 more rats.
Excellent quote, i don't want to listen to a reason of why to kill 10 rats.. .Exactly the problem in games.. The reason TO kill 10 rats should be portrayed, not a reason for..
If you had to kill 10 rats to GET a worthwhile thing you'd have fun killing 10 rats all day.. If you give meaningless gold and exp and rinse and repeat.. you have created boredom, not fun..
Regards,
Mike Cackle
My YouTube Channel
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Doesn't elder scroll online have a big budget also?
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Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
SWTOR is bizzare because it sucked on so many levels.
Is themepark really dead, Is pay to play really dead? Is IP renting really dead? etc. etc.
They screwed up on so many things, its hard to say the game represents a new trend in anything ot is just an outlier.
The only thing that is sure, is that EA's spin is an out and out liar.