The item shops are getting old.. If their game is good why not just charge a monthly fee rather than make a item shop. All item shop games are unsuccessful, probaly the reason they have them to begin with.
After pre-ordering Pirates of the Burning Sea and eagerly awaiting the start of OB in a few months, i decided to head back to another MMO (GVO) as a fill in.
For those who are not familiar, GVO is also known as Age of Sail Online and is made by the legendary Japanese game company KOEI and is a successor it its based Uncharted Watersl series.
Dating back from the early arcade and DOS era, KOEI made a name for itself across Asia with its brand highly addictive and highly sophisticated multi-dimensional games. Since then KOEI has extended its popular game series from 16bit graphics into full 3D, while retaining the same multi-dimensionality that made their games much more complex and engaging than their competitors.
Throughout the years, many of KOEI's games including the Romance of the Three Kingdom series, Uncharted Waters series, Nobunaga's Ambition series have achieved cult status throughout Asian in a similar vein to Blizzard games and the HoM series
However to my surprise and disappointment, what was an thriving and over-crowded community during beta only 6months ago has been withered down to a handful of high level players passing through ghost towns.
Reading through the official forum, the news was bleak. The company is scaling down its investment and merging servers. Many current players are worried about an immanent shutdown and several people pointed to the parallel between the decline of GVO and another Japanese import Belle Isle.
Apart from being both Japanese MMORPGs, both GVO and Belle Isle share something else in common, they both break away from the the linear Korean-centric, Diablo clone MMORPGs that dominate the current market.
While both of these titles appears to have failed to establish itself within the Chinese market, in both Taiwan and Japan, these games have thrived and continue to do so well after their initial release.
This in conjunction with the failure of another Sandbox-orientated MMORPG title EVE and the ridiculous success of WoW, and Korean grindfest imports such as SUN and Shaiya, begs me to ask the question. Do ChineseMMORPG players really 'understand' what MMORPGs are. And by extension do young MMORPG players in the West have a clue what MMORPGs are?
Strictly speaking, the term MMORPG is a conglomerate between two conflicting concepts, MMO and RPG. MMO stands for massive multiplayer online and is characterized as a platform where thousands of human players through avatars can interacted withinsingle persistent world. While RPG stands for where a human-player through an avatar plays the role of a character (usually a hero) through a story arc/improvised scenario within a fantasy world.
While an MMO by nature encourages values such as uniformity, co-operation, shared story arc, common goal, and RPG on the other hand is very much focused on individuality, choice, roleplay, drama. Thus its very difficult for MMORPG to create the same immersive storyline as one would find in a single player RPG like Final Fantasy. In fact, in most Korean grindfest MMOs, the storyline is ommited from the gameplay all together. The story is there, but neither does it influence the game nor does players care much about it. In this sense, many MMORPGs fail to even meet the criteria of being a good enough RPG.
When an MMO is pushed to its extreme, the result is something akin to Second Life and when an RPG is at its best, the result is the likes of Oblivion and FF . But combining the best elements of an MMO and a RPG into one coherent and interesting title is quite a challenge.
It must attain to a persistent world where it allows for both user-interactivity and user-dependency and also allow each individual player to specialize and journey through their own individual story arcs. In other worlds, the true spirit of a MMORPG is a world where each player occupies his/her own niche yet relies on other players to sustain that niche. A MMORPG where one can solo everything is not a MMORPG.
This brings me back to my initial question, how many MMORPG players really understand what MMORPG is about? With so many 'fake' MMORPG out on the market, its no surprise that many players have been caught up in a wave of Korean imports that follow a linear and one dimensional gameplay model. These games are not MMORPGs per se, but rather MMOAPG (Massive Multiplayer Action Playing Games).The Chinese 'MMORPG' market is a prime example where a very limited exposure to authentic MMORPGs and a lack of MMORPG playing history (UO EQ, Merdian) has created a mis-conception of what an MMORPG is.
Many Chinese 'MMORPG' players seem to misunderstand MMORPGs as a linear game, where one progress by killing xxx amount of mobs and then moving onto the next zone and repeat. Where the only individuality available is a pre-set class/race system. Where each player plays out the same story, involving the same gameplay style (grind) and where each player ultimately arrives at the exact same end-game.
As a result, when a title that aspires to the true spirit of MMORPG such as GVO, EVE and Belle Isle comes along, many players shun away from it like some aberration.
It seems that the Chinese market is too comfortable with a mis-conceived notion of MMORPG that new titles such a PW offers not freedom and choice and but a competition of who can out grind who. Where players do not need to plan ahead and work together but instead simply switch on a bot and leaving the computer on for a month.
To conclude im going to list some mis-conceptions surrounding MMORPGs.
-MMOAPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Action Playing Games) are not MMORPGs. Lineage and its babies are not a 'real' MMORPG.
They are linear, do not have content, players do not influence the world through the storyline, and the persistent world is stagnant. These games share more common traits with FPS and Sports games than RPGs.
-MMORPG =\= f2p
There are some great f2p MMORPGs out there (Mabinogi), but true MMORPGs are p2p, because the company needs the fund to develop regular content updates.
-MMORPG =\= soloable
If u can solo a MMORPG why not just go play a single player game.
-The ultimate aim of MMORPG =\= best PvPer
In a true MMORPG, PvP is only one aspect of the game. In a misconceived MMORPG, PvP is the only aspect of the game.
The awful grinds and potion spamming mentality needed for these games. 
associates with better english to push their games in the USA?
