Gorge Lucas back in '77 took a gamble on some b rated movie called Star Wars when in fact many of the main stream Movie companies back then did not want anything to do with it. Sure it put Fox on the map and it became the biggest grossing movie until 2010 when another movie direct slash genius James Cameron of course came out with the movie Avatar. took over Star Wars with in a matter of just a few weeks. Point being that these two men in there on right knew that Sci Fi was the way of the future.

Now thankfully gaming companies like Bioware along with yes even Sony took on Sci Fi games. Thanks to the latter mention today's companies learn from the mistake of others. Just to give us the gamer a real real good gaming experience in our MMO life.
 

Besides who here is not sick of the elf or the orc lol.

Originally posted by battleaxe

Mechwarrior is an IP that could be simply awesome as a scifi MMO.

hmmmm mecha ...

theres a hell of a lot of mecha based anime out there, some of it is awesome, some is a bit meh, but theres a lot of IP resourcing available to a dev studio that dared to be brave

a good mech based sci-fi mmorpg would be gaming heaven

Originally posted by astoria

this https://xsyon.com/ has features that sound too good to be true. I am still not sure if it is sci-fi or fantasy. Sounds like a sci-fi premise with a fantasy result a la Zicree's novel Magictime: Ghostlands where a techological disaster creates a magical rift. Or is it magic? or just a new science we don't understand? (review/summary below with my colored edits)

Sounds like they might have a viable plan for a small dev house though - start with a small area, promise larger world as time goes on (and subs come in) but leave out details. Possibly, they will enlarge it as space is needed as resource 'nodes' can be depleted.

In any case, bump & +1 for EVE, Fallen Earth, and Global Agenda - enjoyed or still enjoying them.

"SF screenwriter Zicree (The Twilight Zone Companion) teams with Philip K. Dick Award–winner Wilson ...blah blah blah ..Since the Change, which nudged the universe into another dimension thanks to a U.S. government agency's snafu, unpredictable magic has replaced modern technology worldwide. Former New York lawyer Cal Griffin leads a courageous band out West in search of his sister, Tina, while another stalwart member of the group, Herman Goldman, looks forlornly for his lost sweetheart, Magritte. [meaningless sentence if you haven't read it] As Cal and company attempt to destroy the evil that caused the Change, the authors effortlessly move the action from New York to Chicago and the old West, where buffalo still roam, a few guns still fire and simulacra of Indians and Calamity Janes lend a helping hand. .... " Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

 

wow, what is this? never before heard about this game, feature list seems amazing.

is this for real?

Good article...

Just a thought...My Guildies and I all met on SWG years back and we've stuck together since in quite a few Games...A few of us saw the CU/Pre CU and the NGE...The good and the bad...I'm about the only one who has kept at least one Account open...One thing we all seem to agree on...IF SOE would ever raise the cap on Characters per Server to 6-8 we would all keep an Account...The 2 Characters Per Server thing is SUCH a rip-off in the current Market...I think if they only changed that one thing it would REALLY help their Sub numbers overall...Not that it would solve anything about the past...

6-8 Characters Per Server, and one each Pre CU and CU Server...I think that would REALLY spark some interest...I don't see why they would not consider it. Based on the fact the Game is dead on most Servers...What could it hurt?...lol

Wouldn't Anarchy Online technically be the "longest running success story in Science Fiction MMOs" rather than Eve seeing as how it's nearly two years older than Eve.  Even considering it's disastrous launch, it was well on it's way to recovery when Eve launched.

Secondly, I cannot believe an MMORPG staffer used the same marketing BS that Cryptic did with the "over 1 million accounts" for STO.  Talk about losing credibility.  The kicker is it was used to counter the almost universal panning of this game from industry reviewers. 

Yeah, I think I may have to quit reading the articles here as well.  Insults, and inflammatory comparisons, coupled with innaccurate, and unverifiable/unconfirmed/anonymous sources as substantiation for the writers point of view leave me disappointed.  This certainly doesn't apply to all the contributors here as a fair number of them are good at tipping the scale back and forth while writing.

Bill Murphy.. at least get it right bro. Anarchy Online's engine overhaul is still working, it's recently come to the state of where the majority of the old code has been removed, and work is moving along quite well.

However, FunCom did cancel working on a OGRE based rendering engine, in favor of going with the DreamWorld engine instead as having 3 inhouse mmo's share the same engine made more sense.

Good effort tho

Originally posted by Rodentofdoom

Originally posted by battleaxe

Mechwarrior is an IP that could be simply awesome as a scifi MMO.

 

hmmmm mecha ...

theres a hell of a lot of mecha based anime out there, some of it is awesome, some is a bit meh, but theres a lot of IP resourcing available to a dev studio that dared to be brave

a good mech based sci-fi mmorpg would be gaming heaven

There is a mech game in development called Perpetuum, but I hope you like Eve because they ripped it off everywhere they could.

Originally posted by leafaele

Why is Ryzom never mentioned in all these sci-fi postings? It is, in my opinion, one of the best (and most underrated) mmorpgs out there.

Because the author was given a piece to write about SCIFI mmos, so he wrote general info known to everyone about well known SCIFI mmos. article is crap, writer - to the guilliotine.

For the love of God please please stop repeating the "million accounts" spin. I've said it before and I'll say it again.. MMORPG.com's unannounced and not ever going to be made MMO is 17% more popular that STO is because MMORPG.com has 1.17 million accounts created.

If every MMO out there tried to report the number of "accounts created" as their "customer base" how many MMOs that haven't even been released have 1 million + loyal customers like STO has? SW:ToR prolly has way more than a million people signed up for a chance to get into their beta and to read their forums... I mean seriously... What about WoW? How many "accounts created" do they have? 50 million over 5 years and all those trials and people that left. I mean they're still "accounts created".

This 1 million "accounts" number is pure spin put out by Cryptic. All it means is accounts on their official site (accounts for applying to beta, readying the forums, Del Taco 48 hour Trials, etc). This is not the number of current subscriptions or the number of people who activated a CD key. I don't know why MMORPG.com writers are stillthrowing this number around, like it has any meaning, when they of all people should know its a pure spin number. I'm sorry to jump all over the author of this post but come on. Take some pride in your work... Reporting this number as being important is basically lying to your readers.

STO could have been the greatest new Sci-Fi MMO if they has done it right. Here's what I would have liked:

- take the basic structure of E&B.

- add a great economic system like they have in Eve.

- create a mission system where the captain actually has a variety of choices instead of linear game play where crew members tell the captain what to do next. The choices should include different branches other than just killing any opponents. One of the choices should have a high chance of failure so that a player can experience how leadership decisions are important.

Maybe they can still fix STO, but it will take a lot of work.

Originally posted by Rodentofdoom

Originally posted by battleaxe

Mechwarrior is an IP that could be simply awesome as a scifi MMO.

 

hmmmm mecha ...

theres a hell of a lot of mecha based anime out there, some of it is awesome, some is a bit meh, but theres a lot of IP resourcing available to a dev studio that dared to be brave

a good mech based sci-fi mmorpg would be gaming heaven

I agree wholeheartedly with this statement, a Mecha MMO, if done right,  would be nerdgasmic! As for the Secret world i believe it does blend elements of sci-fi in it like the lovecraft books; If I recall correctly the blending of sci-fi, horror, and fantasy was coined by him as "wierd fiction".

Let's hope that Masthead Studios get Earthrise properly done, so we get finally something worth playing.

Over a million accounts have been created thus far for the game 

Wrong, wrong, wrong. This statement has been debunked over and over and over again. The "1 million accounts" thing that Atari made an announcement for was shown to be 1 million Cryptic games accounts. This means that any account for Champions Online was counted in that number because accounts for both STO and CO's websites are linked (I used my STO account to sign up for the CO free trial,) and this means that any old person who made an account on STO's website (or multiple accounts) is counted in that number.

Truthfully we simply don't know what STO's official numbers really are for subscribers. So far it hasn't entered the top 20 on XFire, which is something one would definitely expect from a game with 1 million subscribers.

Sorry folks! 

In regards to AO: I meant to say that the OGRE engine was dropped, and switched to Dreamworld.  The quote about it being on indefinite hold was from an early draft and I never remembered to take it out.  It's no excuse, but getting everything I need to say about so many games in under a certain amount of words winds up with me missing some things or misstating others. 

As for the STO thing, I did say 1 million accounts, though I should have said on the website and not "for the game."  Whether that's perpetuating the fact that it's merely accounts and not units sold is another thing, but it's no small milestone regardless. 

As always, I'm actually thankful I can count on you lot to call me out when I fumble a little.  Please proceed with eviscerating me (sarcasm)... be gentle.  :P

-Bill

Originally posted by dethduck

You know what?  I really appreciated this site a helluva lot better when it was just MMO News, reviews and previews.  Not so much now that it's glutted with these "articles" and opinion pieces.  Beginning to wonder why I keep coming here.

You know what? This site is a helluva lot more interesting than every other news blog that just regurgitates the same damn story. Articles like this give us something else to read and discuss. Don't like it? Well, you're in luck because there are a million other generic MMO sites out there you can visit.

Star Trek online ended up to be a very fun casual game. Mind you - casual. If you stick your nose in it 20 hours a day as long as you can go - you will regret you did it.

Good article Bill! I'm a sci-fi guy that's had to play fantasy MMOs for years and years because of the mistakes made with the sci-fi ones. So it's good to see someone spotlighting the genre, as it's probably a much bigger market than fantasy, just going by the amount of Sci-Fi in the entertainment industry vs the amount of fantasy work.

Special thanks for mentioning Planetside! While it will never again be the game it once was, it was still the most fun I've ever had in a decade of MMOs. Roll that puppy back to before Core Combat, fix the bugs, tune up the graphics, movement and UI to 2010 standards, and it'd be a home run hit that would rival a top FPS game in sales.

A man can dream....

This was a pretty good read, is there any Sci-fi mmo underdogs that are free to play? I heard about the sci fi sequel to runescape called mechscape or something similar but I don't think that ever took form. In all honesty though an MMO or just another pc GAME in general for the mech genre would be great, I haven't seen any in the recent years which is pretty stupid because of how many people love the mech genre. Something like ZOE for the ps2 or maybe closer to Virtual On would be a great type of mmo if done correctly.

The tradition of SF is to make you think about what if? Fantasy removes you from reality all together. For a MMO SF becomes more like Fantasy dropping the thinking, strapping on the laser gun. SF in MMO's is pretty much like Fantasy, I can't see any differance between them apart from the graphics.

Solo games like FO3 show how you can create a world that reflects ours but comments on it, rather than ones just tailored to work well with a blaster.

What I want more than anything from sci-fi in general today, not just MMOs, is for them to stop omitting technology that is emerging today. It's infuriating to deal with sci-fi being produced today riddled with force fields, artificial gravity, fusion drives, warp drives and warpgates/stargates/jumpgates, yet utterly lacking nanorobotics or genengineering—or treating them like still-emergent technologies, or being filled with problems these technologies could easily prevent or fix, et cetera. Argh!

Start from modern-day science, look at what's developing and what scenarios are likely to unfold from emergent technologies, choose one scenario and then add a sci-fi wildcard if you have to: an alien race, a strange new substance that allows FTL travel and 'psionic' powers—whatever ignites your lightsaber. Just don't skip over the near future so easily to jump to another typical Star Wars future with spaceships and 'lasers'. Read the work of futurists. Follow a path from here to somewhere reachable from here, for fuck's sake. In all likelihood, we will spread through the galaxy without spacecraft.

The probable futures are so much more interesting than any popular sci-fi. It's sad to see them neglected.