It depends.

If I was playing Big Penis Online, I'd expect to see big penises in my MMORPG. They'd be grinding, leveling up, decked out in loot that came from random drops, etc. I'd probably dual box, so I could be as happy as a man with two Big Penises Online.

However, if I was playing Hello Kitty Online, big penises probably shouldn't make an appearance.

Context is everything.

This was a great promotion - I managed to get several people into beta via VD card.

City of Heroes / Villains has instances that scale, so you can do them solo or an up to an 8 person team.

Originally posted by Daffid011   

The last I heard, Cryptic sold off the CoX franchise to NCSoft and are their own developer now.  Champions will be its own game and I'm sure Cryptic wants to take all the CoX players that they can.

Infogrammes (under the Atari moniker) bought Cryptic, so Atari will be publishing ChampO.

And I'm sure that Cryptic want all of the CoH/V (and WoW, and LOTRO, and EVE, MapleStory etc) players they can possibly get.

What DCUO will be is too hard to tell right now. It's still an alpha build, a lot of things are still being worked and systems will change. So, the videos look good but I'm waiting to see what they actually launch with. The 'mobs worth no XP, only level through completing objectives' is one of those ideas that will turn off a lot of players, for instance.

Originally posted by pencilrick

If this game provides a ruthless world with freedom and consequences (and barring it's not buggy), then is should be a major hit. players will run for the hills.

There, fixed it for you.

Freedom is another term for "you just got ganked by a bigger wolf who is now stealing your stuff". Consequences is another term for "and now that wolf is teabagging you while saying how you enjoy the company of men".

Cryptic have said there is no technical reason why Xbox 360 and PC players can't play on the same servers, but Microsoft Xbox QA processes might stop this from happening (MS QA adds another level of complexity to getting patches through). It was SOE that was finding merging PS3 and PC on the same server difficult.

Provided there is VOIP in game, communicating shouldn't be too difficult. Also, I think there will be a surprising number of Xbox 360 owners playing ChampO, given that you don't need gold membership to play online.

Unfortunately I was never able to play early UO, but I know the stories very, very well. Too many players see themselves as the wolves of PvP, but the reality is that full loot and full PvP means you will meet people nastier and more focused than you, who know the game better than you and who will, if they put their mind to it, make you suffer until you log out in frustration.

I did play Shadowbane Asia though. :-)

I don't know - if Darkfall launches and sucks harder than a black hole, are all the DFanbois going to pony up and apologise to the rest of us?

Probably not. Remember: on the internet, you never have to say you are wrong. You just find another forum.

I think comparisons to Anarchy Online, WAR and AoC will abound.

Originally posted by harmonica

If, say, an average player had $100,000 in his bank/home and upon death you lose about an average of $2,000 worth of items. Would this be acceptable? Or are you still afraid of losing this? If so, why?

That's not full loot.

Full loot is when I steal the $2 000 off their rapidly cooling corpse, head back to their house, kick the door in, gank them while they are still unequipped, steal the other $98 000 they have, paint the wall with their entrails, douse the place in kerosene, kick the body outside, set fire to the house while teabagging the corpse and insulting their sexuality.

Full loot is not stealing what they have on them, it's being able to steal everything they have down the their very enjoyment of the game. If you rob someone of their enjoyment to play, then you loot the only thing that is truly worth taking.

THAT'S full loot.

Attractive, no?

Originally posted by Abrahmm

Another game pushing out crappy graphics with the label "Styalized" over it and thinking people won't notice?

/sigh

I have never seen styalized graphics that actually looked good, and especially not in settings where they don't fit(like Sci-Fi). Why do these companies keep pushing this crap on us?

Like in Star Wars Galaxies, right? 

Originally posted by Mariann

I believe that the entire client is in the 1.4 GB download (just compressed) ... I am on dialup and if I had to download an additional 6.6 GB I would still be waiting to play.

Thanks all for that - all up the 1.4 GB unpacked to about 6.8 GB and the other downloads have been minimal even during play.

If you are in beta you can say that you are in, but nothing more than that. :-)

Personally I think Atari taking over Cryptic will see them delay the title for a Q4 release so it can go out during the Xmas rush.

I've downloaded the installer for Ryzom (about 1.4 GB) and was wondering how big it will be. Most notably, how much will I have to download from the install point? I'm approaching a cap limit for my downloads this month and it isn't worth the grief if I exceed it.

This is a good guide. Congrats!

There are no dead MMOs! They are all just sleeping! :-)

It'd be a lot better in CoH/V if the vast majority of attacks didn't root you with an animation.

Originally posted by tvalentine

the way i look at it is:

1st generation - UO, EQ, AC, DAOC, AO, SWG Pre-cu, etc

2nd generation - WoW through WAR

next generation - darkfall, Earthrise, fallen earth (IF they end up haveing all the features that have been promised.

So what where do The Realm, Meridian 59, Neverwinter Nights et al fit in? Generation zero?

Originally posted by declaredemer

Grand Theft Auto IV

Your argument for innovation, creativity et al would be bolstered a hell of a lot if you didn't keep referring to the fourth sequel of a massively successful single player franchise. And an evolutionary, bug-infested sequel at that. Screaming out "We want INNOVATION!" while holding the fourth retread of an idea (or eighth, if you want to go back to the 2D versions of GTA and the non-numbered sequels) really shows the shallowness of your entire rant.

EQ / EQ2 have only had marginal MMO relevance for years. RMT / microtrans models have been shown to be very successful payment models for a variety of MMOs. It works because players don't have to pay if they don't want to. How's that? If you don't want any of the items, you don't have to pay to play. Compare that to a monthly sub, where you have to pay regardless of your opinion at the latest content if you want to keep playing.

As has been pointed out - and which you've pointedly ignored, preferring to play the matyr - there are plenty of other different titles out there to play. You could go back to where all the "freedom" originally came from and play UO. Perhaps you could try Dreamlords, an MMORTS. Or EvE, which stands out in a class by itself. Or Chronicles of Spellborn or Darkfall, both held up as great white hopes for the future of MMOs. Or a ton of other titles - take a look through the list available here at MMORPG. Try some out.

... but I think you'd rather be up on your soapbox, throwing out buzzwords that you don't even understand.

Sorry for the cross-posting, but probably people outside of the ChampO forums would be interested in knowing that Atari has bought Cryptic Studios.