Originally posted by SaintViktor

Left4Dead Online anyone ?

me.

It's a pretty good list, but now let's see a counter-article about the five companies that should NOT make an MMORPG.

I agree with others. A good list. My only, admittedly pessimistic, concern is that they will just make an MMO in the light of the "themepark" brand that all the other major companies are doing. If they were to create new progression methods (other than the level climb) and do away with the idea of "end-game" (and instead build from the principle that the world goes on and on), I'd like to see them take a shot at it. I'd be even more interested if they weren't governed by "combat is the 800lb gorilla in the corner" and instead took the "we have a bunch of intelligent chimps to satiate" (crafting, socializing, combat, story, etc.) in equal/interacting parts approach.

Originally posted by DarkRexx

It's a pretty good list, but now let's see a counter-article about the five companies that should NOT make an MMORPG.

My top 5.

5. Company that takes the safe route (level based, quest hub to quest hub with an "end-game")

4. Company that takes the safe route (level based, quest hub to quest hub with an "end-game")

3. Company that takes the safe route (level based, quest hub to quest hub with an "end-game")

2. Funcom

1. Sony Online Entertainment

The List needs more Id Software and Relic Entertainment. Homeworld MMO FTW.

Originally posted by eagle4x4

Originally posted by grunty

Nice list. I had to stop reading about Valve's Portal though since it is still on my to-be-played list.

 

WHAT ?!!!

You mean you haven't played it yet?

Stop whatever you are doing right now and play Portal....trust me, the MMO(s) will be there when you finnish, you will not be disappointed.

Portal was a good game and all, but really? It took me 4 hours tops to beat the whole game the first time through. In fact, I was supposed to write a history report the day I heard about it, I Downloaded the game and beat the whole thing with ample time to write the report.

Sure these games are good but their not great. If I can beat a game in 4 hours without knowing anything about it prior then why am I spending 60 dollars on it, when I can wait for a half decent RPG to come out spend the same 60 dollars and get an exponential amount more out of it?

Am I the only person left on the planet who cares about having fun for more then an hour?

Games like Portal, Fable 1 & 2~ Are great for the 4 hours they last then I get to play them again? and get some extra potatoes this time through. I'll pass.

TLDR Portal is good but its not the best game every its not worth stopping whatever your doing to play, but you know what game is? Battletoads seriously I've never beat it but the game is still so awesome to play.

As to what company should make an MMO, its easy. Rare

anyone ever thought that maybe these studios you know...don't want to make MMO's?  Not everyone in the industry enjoys MMO's and i can guarentee plenty of devs fit that catagory too.

oh and your definition of sandbox seems way off to me.  How is Age of Empires a sandbox game?  You have to follow a set path (depending on your civilisation) up the tech tree to the final stages using units that resemble many other factions.  To me thats exactly the same as say a WoW system where your limited by your talent points that the devs made for your class (same as the tech) and your abilities are very similar to other classes with maybe a different name and a different animation (similar units).  That is in no way anywhere near what a sandbox is in my books.

anyway it's your opinion and i respect it.  Nice list too

Originally posted by Redtah

Sure these games are good but their not great. If I can beat a game in 4 hours without knowing anything about it prior then why am I spending 60 dollars on it, when I can wait for a half decent RPG to come out spend the same 60 dollars and get an exponential amount more out of it?

You spent $60 on Portal? Where? How? I've never even seen the Orange Box at a higher price than $45, myself, and that's Portal, HL2, HL2E1 and E2, AND Team Fortress 2... :-O

Honestly if their was a top 5 companies that Should not make MMOs it would be:

5.Every game company that thinks it will be the new "WoW killer" of the month, you better have something that will revolutionise the MMO market in every single way imaginable if you think your game would actually kill WoW, this also includes all games that only have IPs to back them up. (couph matrix, couph final fantasy)

4.New companies: New game companies need tfo stay out of the MMO market till they get their feet wet, and by wet i mean drenched in every game type other than a MMO before they even think about a MMO title, sadly this includes never before heard of Asian game companies that just decided to go from weird Dating games into the MMO market and drive just enough Hype to get their game created.

3.Girly companies : Hello Kitty, Barbie, and Hannah montanna need to get out of video games altogether, when will game companies understand that girls dont play video games until they are older and roped into MMOs by their boyfriend / husband to heal them.

2. SOE / EA: they need to stop making MMOs, they had their shots and as much fun as it is to try and make a MMO it might be best for everyone if you just let people that can actually maintain their MMOs. EA does get slightly a better rap only because they absorbed Bioware recently and Bioware cant be expected to take on the sins of the parent company.

1. Nintendo based MMO: As much as it would be cool to play a serious Link, Mario, or Samus MMO Nintendo and the internet still dont get along, (go try and play Smash Bros Brawl online.) On top of this nintendos stuck in the world of the Wii controller(and every thing that comes with the Wii.) might force players of a class type to use the thing (or heaven forbid the new pulse regulator...lol)

A solid stable and high performing "Doom Online" would bury WoW in the Na/EU market place.

Originally posted by Punkre  

3.Girly companies : Hello Kitty, Barbie, and Hannah montanna need to get out of video games altogether, when will game companies understand that girls dont play video games until they are older and roped into MMOs by their boyfriend / husband to heal them.

Um... My fiancée would like to give you a hearty cup of STFU. While she has no time for Hello Kitty or Barbie, she's been a gamer since she understood the concept of video games, pretty much. And there's plenty of games she's way the hell and gone better at than I ever will be. As well, what do you care if there's a Hannah Montana MMO? It's not like you'll be tied to a chair and forced to play it.

So take your misogyny and shove it where the sun don't shine. I have no time for it, and neither does anyone else.

Originally posted by calibek

I wish Sierra would create an MMO. I played their Quest for Glory Series. I started at QfG 5 and liked it so much I went out and bought the collection of 1-4 and played those. They have 1-3 on gametap and if anyone here is a member I suggest playing it. Quest for Glory 1 was great and they just got better as time went on with 5 being the absolute best IMO. Quest for Glory 4 was great also cause it had the whole tranylvania theme with vampires. I would love to see what Sierra could have done with an MMO.

Funny that Sierra online is in the list for starting to make an mmo as they have worked on an some sort of mmo

Larry 4 was supposed to be an online version of the leisure suit series.

However at that time they probably wud have been the first and i think tech issues and money budget stopped the project

They did however went online with some boardgames (not sure but thought in larry style)

altough that didnt hold on long either coz of the steep price of playing if i remember correct

found some info on Al Lowe's web site to refresh my memory

Back then, no game had ever had more than three incarnations and I had no reason to think Larry would either. Ken and I started kicking around ideas for another project.

We decided to invent Internet gaming.

"No, wait," you're saying. "That was Al Gore, not Al Lowe!" Wrong, bit breath! We were so naive, so over-confident (so dumb?) that when Ken came up with the idea of adventure games where multiple-players could interact together via modems, we said, "Sure, Ken. Sounds great!" and actually sat down to do it.

It was going to be Leisure Suit Larry 4, the first multi-player on-line adventure game.

Jeff Stephenson had written much of the system code for the AGI and SCI languages. He was going to create the system. Matthew George would create the low-level communications code. I would be the designer and high-level applications programmer. The three of us grabbed an office and a coffee pot and started coding in January, 1991.

We had a few basic questions:

How will people connect up? The only way we knew was through dial-up modems, so we filled a computer with modems, then bought an expansion chassis and filled it with modems, then plugged in another chassis and kept daisy-chaining them together.

Could we expect 2400-baud modems? We opted to "demand" 1200-baud minimum speed but "recommend" the speedier new technology, which was, at that time, still quite expensive.

How do we handle the huge graphics files necessary? Easy. We planned to sell the game in a box, but require a modem. The game code, graphics, sounds, etc. would be on the floppies (no CD-ROMs either). Only minimum data would pass through the slow comm bottleneck.

How would players decide who was in their game? I came up with the concept of a "waiting room" where newcomers hung out until they found others who wanted to play.

How would I know what you were like? I created what we nicknamed "Facemaker," which let you decorate your avatar with various eyes, noses, mouths, and hair (including bald, of course).

And on and on…

After a month or so, we knew we were in trouble. I decided to write a checkers game as a simple test case to see if we could actually move objects and communicate. It worked. But we were still a long way from making characters walk and communicate and interact.

So I wrote a backgammon game. Then chess. Still we had no system to support all the features needed for an adventure game. But we were having so much fun playing against each other, we decided to push what we had into a real product. Ken envisioned a product so simple that even his grandmother could use it. That became our goal.

My wife, Margaret, came up with the first name Constant Companion, because we figured anyone could log on at any time, day or night, and find someone else to play with. Constant Companion became The Sierra Network. TSN was quite successful in its day, especially considering the small numbers of players who also had modems.

Eventually, when TSN was losing 10 million dollars per year, Ken sold half of it to AT&T for 50 million dollars. I laughingly said Sierra was the only company to make money in on-line gaming: by selling out! Later AT&T would pay another 50 mil for the other half. They then sat on it for about a year before giving up and selling the whole thing to America On-Line for 10 million. AOL announced big plans, but never carried through and the whole thing withered up and died without ever seeing the light of day.

taken from AL Lowe's website.

Leisure Suit Larry would have been a good MMO to have by Sierra.  There was a column last week by Dana Massey www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/3216/A-Comedy-MMO.html that would satisfy the Comedy missing in the vast amount of MMO genre's on the market today....and it has "Lounge Lizards!"

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

Originally posted by DarkRexx

It's a pretty good list, but now let's see a counter-article about the five companies that should NOT make an MMORPG.

My top 5.

5. Company that takes the safe route (level based, quest hub to quest hub with an "end-game")

4. Company that takes the safe route (level based, quest hub to quest hub with an "end-game")

3. Company that takes the safe route (level based, quest hub to quest hub with an "end-game")

2. Funcom

1. Sony Online Entertainment

Too bad you are way wrong with #2

Ever heard of Anarchy Online?  And "GASP" Age of Conan is actually a fun MMO.

Did anyone besides my best friend and I play The Realm way back when? I'm pretty sure it was a Sierra-made MMORPG.

There were some nifty bits, like the magic crystals used for spellcasting also being the only form of currency (yeah it was possible to bankrupt your mage).  It was many years ago so I don't remember much, but it was fun for a while.

I remember The Realm, and was going to mention it.  Yes, it was made by Sierra.  It's actually still around although being run by another company now: http://www.realmserver.com/.

Not a very well done list IMO

Where is Bethesda?
If there is a studio which should make a MMO, that is the folks from Bethesda.

Also I don't see why Valve should make a MMO, why not ID Software for instance?
They make the same products but ID has much more experience than Valve.

Originally posted by ste2000

Not a very well done list IMO

Where is Bethesda?
If there is a studio which should make a MMO, that is the folks from Bethesda.

Also I don't see why Valve should make a MMO, why not ID Software for instance?
They make the same products but ID has much more experience than Valve.

the Bethesda issue has been discussed previously within this very thread. As to the why not ID software questions, I think I pretty clearly mentioned why I felt that Valve would be a good choice. it wasn't just about experience, it was about the kinds of games made.

You're allowed to disagree with my list. That's the point of them, but it may be helpful to read the accompanying text beyond just the headlines in order to get a sense of the substance of what was said.

Articles like this just annoy me. A company making games where <50 people connect to a server that the company doesn't host to play a game that doesn't require constant updates, expansions, numerous types of character classes/skill setups/playstyles that need balancing, doesn't show any indication of being able to make a huge virtual 24/7 world where thousand to tens of thousands of people interact at one time.

Yes blizzard did it and they are a solid company, many companies have tried making MMOs and failed. The reason is how much more complex and intricate an MMO is then a one off game that people join a small internet game and frag people in.

I don't want to be overly critical but first there is Sanya, or whatever her name is, who's articles are just ridiculous. And now this guy's articles are getting more ridiculous with each one as well. Guess it's time to just stay off of the article part of this site and leave it to what it's point is, reviews of actual games/forums.

I don't want to sound harsh to the site overall.  Since on the main page you have information on a class in Free Realms, blogger review of DDO, information on changes to EVE, information on EQ 10th anniversary. All those are useful information and the type of reading that belongs here. But these columns that have sprung up in the last couple months are just ridiculous.

5D Studios

Nuff said :-)