Hi Matt

My question would be more on business models, in your opinion is F2p or some varient of it the way of the future or will we return to subs ? and as a side note for a small scale MMO is there more money in F2P with cash shop or sub model ?

What I'd like to know is how often to Developers get to create the MMORPG they want to build vs the MMORPG that they have to deliver based on what the people holding the purse strings are expecting?

More directly, did you ever see someone come up with a good design idea that might be a bit different, but they were told, no, better make it more like WOW because we "know" that sells well.

Welcome Mr. Miller.

If you were allowed to make your dream game, what would it be?

Heya Matt Miller!

This particular space in the web is filled with unrequited 'Sandbox' mmo fans.  There have been three large notable sandbox mmos, EVE, UO and SWG.  Two of those moved away from the original concept.  My question:   What are the technical aspects of a Sandbox design that are problems for developers?

Much respect on the CoH front.  Over the years, I've been very happy it was the first mmo that kept me playing.   Elementar from Virtue salutes!  

Hi! I'm excited to read what you have to say for many of these questions.

Kickstarter has been mentioned a couple times and I really hope you offer your opinion on it. There have been a number of video game projects on Kickstarter from well known developers that got quite large in donations. I would think that crowd funding would get many developers very excited that they can make a game how they want to make it.

Do you think developers could go the crowd funding route to create a successful "AAA" MMO? 

Many gamers feel that the big publishers and such put a lot of pressure on developers, effectively killing the visions that the developers want to work towards. They feel that the publishers tell them what features to put in or leave out in order to fit their time schedule and budget. How close to the truth is that belief in your experience? If some of the current or past MMOs were crowd funded instead of being shackled to big companies like EA and SOE do you think they'd be much different/better?

Welcome Matt!

I look forward to reading your Column! I playede COH on and off since beta. I did leave to play other games But CoH was the home I always came back to. So many great memories and the best gameing comunity ever!

Originally posted by TheQuinch

Originally posted by lizardbones

Welcome to MMORPG.com Matt. It's always cool when someone from the "inside" posts articles here.

So, off to the question. Super hero MMOs don't seem to fare especially well. They also seem to be very bright and colorful, kind of like an 80s comic book. Do you think these two things are related? Do you think a super hero MMO would fare better if it went through a "gritty reboot"?

I'm tempted to try and offer my opinion on that, but I'm worried that I might end up threadjacking. Would anyone object the attempt?

Well it may be called threadjacking. But hey. Its an open forum. If you can present a well thought opinion on it. I'd certainly like to read it. I've played all the Superhero MMOs. And Though they seem to in theory be interesting. They never get my gamer heart pumping. 

So take a whack at it. Who cares? All they're gonna do is delete it and you may get a warning because some stiff necked dick clicked the report button and whined.

(in case this does happen. Could you PM me what you had responded with incase I do not see it.)

Welcome aboard Matt! Good read and I am looking forward to more of your articles. It is nice that someone is actually taking the time to take us behind the curtain to show us around.

I loved CoX when I was playing it, had a really nice Demon Summoning Mastermind. Wish I had taken the time to go back and take a few screenies of Wizard of Odd, but I didn't have the heart to. I let the game sundown in peace and had taken my closure reading other peoples columns who had years invested in the game. That is one of the reasons why I never get too attached to an MMO. It is because at any time, it can all go away.

i remember CoH launch. it was fantastic amounts of fun. Even years later the community as a whole was one of the best I have ever seen for any MMO.  I would come back for a few months every year just to participate.  I have no idea what magic it was in CoX that made the community so great but i miss that more than anything. the Deviant art community, forums, and servers were all full of great people.

my question:

Do you think games like WAR would have faired better if 3 factioned like DAoC?

Do you think an MMO could profit if it had a finite # of kingdoms instead of 2 faction or ffa?

Matt, a great intro, and looking forward to the future installments of your MMO insider info!

And thanks again for creating the MMO that was my spare time timesink for over 8 years from opening day till the end of the world.  I put over $2K in real money into the game during that time, and still don't think I wasted a penny.

The only problem I have now is finding another MMO that has a decent percentage of the sheer playability CoH/CoX had.  I'm afraid Paragon Studios spoiled me for life.

My main in the game was Sugoi or Sugoi-chan on all servers.

Hey Matt! Here's a question for a future column.

What impact do you see Google Fiber having on MMOs? Obviously early, but if it becomes more widespread, how would that affect multiplayer games online? Should I move to Kansas City now, or wait a few years?

Very nice! Welcome to MMORPG.com, Positron! (You'll always be Positron to me!)

My question is this: How come very few hybrid-model games use an MTX system where 1 Point = $0.01?

Welcome to MMORPG.com Positron! My first MMO was City of Heores untill they killed it. It was easy to get online and run with my friends . Role playing or doing task forces or even just missions.I played for 7 years and I am sad to say I didn't get a chance to do the content from the Night ward. I too am looking for a new home ,but the other MMOs don't even come close to City of Heroes. I think you guys spoiled MMOs for me =). 

My question is : I understand that this is about making money,but why would a company drop their MMO even if it was making money?I would think a steady cash flow would keep them happy,but that was not the case for City of Heroes.

Can't we all just get along? I can't find a game that doesn't involve warfare - is that a cultural phenomena peculiar to mankind? Frankly, the reason I look for games is to escape the violence but haven't been very successful in that endeavor.....

Matt,

In your dialogue about previous experiences..

Muds, Meridian 59, EQ... I noticed you didn't mention UO, so maybe you can't answer this, but....

Why won't someone with a budget make a good modern version of Ultima Online?

I understand the reasons for constant EQ clones, but surely SOMEBODY could get big financial backing to recreate a UO Sandbox?

after reading your article I went on to your blog to check it out, and on one of the posts I read one comment that got me thinking about several things related to common mmorpg worlds.

staright to the question: could you comment, on a future article here, about game mechanics that you had to scrap in fear of player exploitation? Ideas that seemed great, idealistically, but would obviously open many fronts for abuse.

To contextualize it a bit, on your blog one user was commenting on the hyper-inflation topic and went on a tangent about elitism - elite players refusing to join undergeared ones -; and it just got me thinking that one simple solution would be to provide some sort of bonus (xp, most likely) to make the idea of more heterogeneous groups more palatable for the stronger players. But, this idea naturally and very obviously would lead to people forming parties, even on slug mobs, to take advantage of the system. Maybe with undergeared ppl on purpose or even with the use of slave accounts just to maximize the benefits. and thus, turning the whole thing into one very bad idea. [no need to further discuss implementation and mechanics, I'm only trying to get the point accross]

As a developer (an insider), I'm quite sure that you will probably have many other examples to share, not only on this particular subject that I used for context but even on stuff that could affect the entire virtual world of one game (economy, gameplay, mechanics).

Hey Matt, I'm a frequent commenter here, and a former indy game company CEO, post mortem lurker, virtual worlds developer, MUD elder, and so on.  I keep talking to folks about how in my generation (35 years programming, 30 years of it on the Internet proper) the systems programmer was the king/queen of all, this generation it's the game engine that rules all, not the operating system -- that the game engine is more complicated than the operating system itself.

I'd love it if you could do a little edu-ma-cation for folks as to what it takes to make these games work on every PC (and possibly Mac/Unix/browser/...) out there, the raw miracle of it, and what it sounds like to a dev when they complain that something doesn't work right and won't give a dxdiag and config, or reinstall drivers, and so on.

The customer/gamer may always be right, but they can also sound so wrong to a dev and it would be a public service to air some of those points too.

Other points are, oh, the amorphous nature of lag (and what that means to PvP, for example).  

What localization and language preferences in public channels means in an increasingly global world of truly massive gaming, where Russian, Polish, Korean, and Chinese players far outnumber English speakers far less native English speakers, and how game companies will be strategizing around that in the future.

How devs and beancounters will be dealing with the Golden Horde of gamers who like to play what's new this month, diss it because it's cool to diss what's new as harshly as possible in social media, and then move on -- and how this warps marketing games (sub and f2p).

At the MIT Game Lab (Formerly GAMBIT) we talk about this stuff a *lot*, but fans rarely get to hear it.  If I talk about it here I usually get a "wtf do you know lady?" stfu thrown at me.  But I'd love to see you address them with better cred.

Thanks!

Shava

good to see you got a job here matt, I loved cox it was mu first mmo, though I tired others, there was something that kept bringing me back to dawn the cape an cowl.

Good to see articles by people who are working in the industry that are not about their latest game. This guy seems a sound choice and has a background to match.