General Discussion

Originally posted by hitec7

 

Originally posted by Binny45

one that will come from a relatively unknown company, with unknown people who do it, not for profit, but for a love of the game.

It is my belief that being limited by the demands of investors limit creativity and often result in games that are released WAY too early, often leading to their unfortunate demise.

It's my hope that soon, one will rise from the ranks that will establish itself as a true, 3rd generation MMO.

Are there any takers out there?

 

Dream on.
The MMO's is all about the money and that will never change sadly.

Sure, money makes the world go around, but do NOT underestimate the underground developer.   All you have to do is look at some of the mod work for such games as Half Life, Half Life 2, and Oblivion (just to name a couple) to really see what independant developers are capable of.

The smartest thing one of these companies could do would be to foster a number of these companies, providing mentorship and limited financial support in exchange for control over their product.  Will it happen?  Hehe, who knows?  But history is full of examples of the small guy doing something outstanding and setting the standard in their field. 

So yeah, I'll dream on, and chances are it'll be a dreamer with an idea and some skill with code that will make you eat your words. ;)

  MMO Mods....maybe a new course for players to take. A WOW Killer perhaps. The next big thing?

You (OP) are mentioning Mods of popular games made by fans who love their game. It was the ability to mod PC games that weened me off of consoles because modding allowed me to gain so much more enjoyment out of my games than just cheat codes and game saves that console games offer.

There are efforts underway to back engineer the code to SWG and EVE, and I believe this is the first step towards us seeing the first MMO mods. Albeit, the owners of the code may not appreciate the copyright infringement, but there are times game developers see these mods in a positive light as it is free, 3rd party game developement that brings in more customers to buy the original game.

The NGE caused a group of disenfranchised players to begin their efforts on the SWGEmulator. They went open source on their code and have spent the past couple of years gradually unlocking the secrets as the original code was written at SOE with not a whole lot of documentation or explanation for a 3rd party to view and understand the inner programming as it is a proprietary property and wasnt meant to be decoded.

I just recently stumbled onto the EVEmulator while I was researching the Homeworld 2 EVE mod for one of my favorite space RTS games. My hope for an eventual mod of a EVE online version of Homeworld 2 as I favor the old sci-fi style of space ship art of Chriss Foss, Syd Mead and John Berkey. Granted the graphics from the old Homeworld series needs updating to current system standards. CCP did approve of their ship models for this mod, btw, supporting my statement that it if successful, the mod might bring in a few more subscribers who want to know more about the game where these ship models come from.

For those of you who want to fly a Firefly transport from Serenity, or play BSG, there are a few Freelancer Mods out there found on Lancers Reactor. You wont have ambulatory avatars as in SWG, but you will have a precursor game to what EVE Online is and the multi player capability to chat while playing. This community also has SW ships mod called Freeworlds which is what I played before SWG. Just about any ship model out there you can think of has been imported into Freelancer in one mod or another sci-fi fans.

I would like to predict an open source MMO that allows players to upload their own content to their chosen server that meets the Administrator's requirements would spawn a movement for MMO's in the directions their subscribers demand. SWG up till the CU and NGE fostered some feedback in the forums to help the game developers to prioritize what needed to be fixed first. After the NGE caused a schism in it's subscriber base (and benefitted other MMO's in gaining the MMO refugees it caused) there was a percieved sense of futility in asking SOE for anything. Hence the emulator project.

I understand there are a few WOW mods out there. If only WOW could be open sourced, would the community mod it into Starcraft? Why not Diablo? Blizzard knows its fanbase. I wonder if they would release all these MMO's and did what SOE tried, a game card subscription that cost just a little more, but gave access to all their products.

The next BIG MMO is........

www.highstreet5.com.sg/information/game%20intro.html

I'm hoping that the next big MMO will be Mortal Online, it looks set to be something great if they deliver what they promise, it would also fit with what the OP said.

All these new MMOs seem to care about is being grittier and more realistic than the last.  As "revolutionary" as AoC may or may not be, WAR will be the next big game because people just aren't attracted to boring.  Don't get me wrong, I like (not love) the world of Conan, but a great MMORPG setting it is not.  As much as I'd like to see a small company break out and come out with a truly great game, without big time publishing support, it will never get the publicity needed to truly to capture a worthy % of the market.    You can make a great game with a PvP focus... and it should never be added as an afterthought... but without great design and setting, you'll never truly be able to reach to top.  Far too many MMORPGs, especially the so called PvP ones, feature such bland, uninspired settings populated with drab, boring characters.

Originally posted by Binny45

 

Originally posted by grimfall

The market there is literally three to four times that of North America and Europe put together.  And the funny thing is, there are other MMO's in Asia that laugh at WoW's "Paltry" 10 million subs.  Imagine that?

You would have to imagine that, since it's not true.  Which Asian games have 50 million paying subscribers?  The population in Asia is bigger, but the market is not.  If you take out the people selling gold to Western's and Aussies the market is really quite small.  I played EQ on a server that had a prominent korean and japanese guild (as well as a Brazilian one).  I didn't survey all the servers, but I am sure mine wasn't unique in that aspect.

Korea's #1 selling game of all time (last I heard) was a game called Starcraft, you may have heard of it...

Ahem!  Check the stats on Maple Story, then come back and talk.  Then check Lineage 2, not to mention countless others.  There's over a billion people in China alone!  A dev would have to be foolish not wanting to tap into that market.  Heck!  It was said that Pandaran's were left out of WoW because it is illegal to portray Panda's, in any form, being hurt or killed.  When a country and simply say "No" and have Blizzard listen, well, lets just say that accounts for clout.

 

We North Americans need to relalize there are more people out there than our small little part of the market. Those that do tend to be more successful.  But hey, don't take my word for it, ask the folks at Blizzard who makes millions MONTHLY on their subscriptions. ;)

Korea's #1 game might be Starcraft, but we're discussing MMO's here, stay on topic!  Starcraft might provide multiplayer action, but it is NOT an MMO.

The US's GDP is roughly 4 times that of China's and 12 times the size of Indias. (EU is 5 times as much China), So your big untapped market has the about 11% of the GDP of your little market.  Then when you start talking about disposable income, the descrepancy would be even greater.  Did you know that the majoriy of Chinese players don't even own computers, and that the government is looking at ways to restrict their gameplay?

Facts, they're a bitch but it's better to live with them than without them.

And Starcraft was made by company called Blizzard, who also made World of Warcraft, which was my point about them realizing the potential for Asian customers.  You're both arguing that WoW ignores Asia then say that they changed their game so they can sell it in China (which of course is nonsense, but you said it), so quit making things up and quit contradicting yourself, please.

Originally posted by Binny45

one that will come from a relatively unknown company, with unknown people who do it, not for profit, but for a love of the game.

It is my belief that being limited by the demands of investors limit creativity and often result in games that are released WAY too early, often leading to their unfortunate demise.

It's my hope that soon, one will rise from the ranks that will establish itself as a true, 3rd generation MMO.

Are there any takers out there?

That sounds to me like Jumpgate Evolution, but I have a feeling they'll make it too "easy" for the veteran Jumpgate pilots to like it, and too "hard" for casual MMO players to enjoy having to actually fly their own ship.  With any luck, they'll prove me wrong...