SW:TOR, Secret World, FF XIV, Guild Wars 2 

A couple months ago I may have thrown STO, Global Agenda, not happy with the pricing structure and the yet to be annouced Blizz a bone but with STO going where it is and Blizz looking at going more casual friendly (than WoW, really?)  I don't think we'll see much past the top four for a couple years.

Still on the fence as far as DCUO or whatever Marvel has cooking.

Originally posted by Elikal

Its just a long bla blah "we are all victims of the system" shit. I can't hear it anymore. SOME people make decisions, and it is not us gamers. I don't care rats ass if developers or managers or goddamn cleaning personell decides, but SOMEONE in those corporations makes decisions, and they are apparently not smarter than those who ran all those bankrupt banks.

I am not even pointing at myself, but in every single beta there were enough clever people who pointed at the issues long before and the companies and whoever responsible WITHIN those companies chose to ignore the warnings. Devs, managers, I don't care, but the truth was THERE.

As anyone who has worked for any large corporation will tell you corporations waste money because they do not take the time to look into the small everyday operations. Personally I work for a very small company, and yes I still see waste, but my girlfriend has worked for three very large corporations since we've known each other and they all waste amazing amounts of money because they don't take the time to deal with the individuals who run each division, more managers equals more waste, time and again she's seen this. Recently they even told all employees that they would no longer match the 401k, no college reimbursement and freeze all raises but a month later hired a new VP and spent half a mil on party in her honor, in the building she works in. Most corporations are not smart, fast or agile, they are plodding old dinosaurs.

Gaming corporations are as well. I think it's safe to say that most of us are looking for something new in this genre but we aren't seeing it from the large corporations. The biggest launch of this year, with the possible exception of Aion, could be FE. Yeah CO is chugging along but the free Halloween weekend just reaffirmed, for me anyway, that it wasn't a game I'd be interested in long term. FE went a slightly different direction and although no one is expecting the numbers of an Aion the community seems pretty stable and growing. It's still too early to tell but will Funcom be able to do something similar with The Secret World because it is different, let's hope. But games like STO, which I am still holding a bit of hope out for, goes and alienates what should be their core players by simply ignoring several main components of the IP, is that smart, is that even sane?

On a personal note, I played Planetside when it launched, the biggest problem I had with this game was a simple one that I believe still exists, if the bullets, beams, etc. do no hit the aiming reticule why have one at all? I'm not talking about a shotgun here, or the sniper rifle for that matter, but when you hit 5 feet to the left with a rifle blast of where you are aiming the game becomes pretty pointless. Let's hope this gets fixed in PS2 and I'll be back.

 This is nothing new, Phantasy Star Online called itself an MMO. We just need a new term, uh SRMOG, Server Room Multiplayer Online Game, but that's TF2 too. LMOG, Limited Multiplayer Online Game, but again, too broad. Ok I got it, WRWMMMOBMT, We Really Wanted to Make an MMO But Made This. That work for everyone?

 Really, one question that should have been asked after this:

MPC: What about playing as the Klingons

CZ: We’re not ready to reveal too much, but the Klingon gameplay will be drastically different from the Federation. It’ll open up a couple of hours into the game, and will be more PVP focused.

You have to play as Federation to get to the Klingon content?

Besides that some question of the obvious worries from Start Trek fans should have been made.

 This is why I let my subscriptions to Maximum PC and PC Gamer lapse, if you want decent questions asked you pretty much have to find a way to ask them yourself anymore. Anyone else remember when journalists asked tough questions, even of developers?

 If you're shopping for a decent ISP (I don't think good ones exist) and don't mind dealing with a cable company WOW has great customer service, especially compared to TW in my area, a great connection and I haven't heard anything about limiting my bandwidth yet. This is around Columbus OH, though.

 Extremely happy to hear that. Thanks!

 I've been going over this site (http://www.finalfantasyxiv.com/) for a couple days and have been fairly excited about the prospects, so much so that I am attempting to get into the 14 day trial for FFXI but I'm starting to remember launch day which was pretty much the day I stared at the Play Online "browser". Here I am a few years later and it's still the most difficult time I've ever had getting into a game. So before I get too much more excited about the possibilities of FFXIV has SE done anything to make this easier on us since Play Online's launch? I'm still not sure how many passwords I have, they're all the same btw, why they bother with a Play Online ID number and Mailing Address or why it takes three times as long as it should to move on to the next section of the form. But a good half hour later I'm still stuck outside FFXI, this is after downloading the game last night, and getting a password error. That's when I started flashing back to launch.

Does anyone know whether they plan on using this "service" with FFXIV? I vaguely remember Play Online as not being that difficult after you got past setup but I could be hoping to.

 Thanks for the write up, I'm still on the fence but this helped.

From a business standpoint if I had just invested millions in making an MMO would I expect to recoup most of that from a $50 box or a long term monthly subscription? Absolutely both, if I were Blizz, SOE, etc. but from a small company like Icarus Studios with a niche, if nothing else, hit on it's hands I'd be looking past the obvious short term gain and release the client as a very limited trial and expect to gain more customers who were willing to give it a try as long as they didn't have to plunk down $50 for what could be a dead end game in a month, to them, if they didn't enjoy it. If they did you may have a client for years, is it worth the chance to make more money in the long term and keep current customers happier with the influx of new blood?

Originally posted by Anubisan

I will certainly give the game a shot when it comes out because I am a mega-Trekkie. However, it seems obvious to me at this point that Cryptic is not taking the correct approach here. If they release the game in Feb., I guarantee it will be unfinished. No MMORPG can possibly be released in a polished state with so little time in its development,

And the argument someone raised about them releasing early because they didn't have to work on the engine design is rubbish. SWTOR is being developed on an engine that was already fully designed and ready before they began working on a single piece of content. They have since been painstakingly implementing the content since 2006. That means it will have at least FOUR YEARS of development on an already finished game engine.

On the other hand, Cryptic is pushing out STO after only picking up the IP last year. There is no possible way that this game will have anywhere even remotely close to the content or polish that you will find in SWTOR. And considering the way Champions was rushed out without Cryptic even having decided exactly what they wanted to do with the gameplay mechanics, I think that is very scary.

I gotta agree here. I'm looking forward to STO but with CO as a new Cryptic standard I'm worried what they'll do with this. Yeah obviously companies need the money but if they push another unfinished MMO out the door Cryptic will quickly become a joke. Take the time, do it right, and if they have absolutely great, but if they haven't this'll cost them more than waiting a few more months for a decent launch. Here's hoping for the best.

 I've mentioned this in other posts but yeah the reason they do is they can. There was a blurb from someone (possibly no longer) at Mythic talking about seeing MMOs within 5 years as what they are, a subscription, and stop charging for expansions, clients, etc. I'm hopeful but I don't see this coming anytime soon as long as we continue to pay for them. But if companies like Cryptic would look at the possibility of allowing us access to CO from launch for just a subscription fee they would at least have some of money at this point instead of none. I probably would have paid for 2 months by now before running away. More on topic same for Fallen Earth. I'm kind of interested in the game but I'm not going to throw $50 away on kind of but I would throw $15 away for a month of trying it out, same with Darkfall and several others.

Originally posted by Magnum2103

Question:  If The Old Republic MMO becomes successful like WoW, will people start bashing Bioware in every single thread like they with Blizzard? 

Yeah you gotta bash whoever's on top. Used to be SOE, now Blizz, maybe Bioware's next. On the more serious side I still see Blizz as a decent company, I don't agree with most of what they do but I don't feel dirty giving them my money like I still do with SOE. Maybe it's still old wounds, EA and SOE are on my pretty short list of companies to avoid.

 If anyone from EA is bothering to read this, sorry you lost your jobs, that's a crappy thing to happen no matter what you do and I hope you find better ones soon.

As far as WAR, I think it was simply a match made in hell. EA saw WoW, knew WoW was based on WAR and that we were getting bored and maybe wanted a grown up version, good idea, maybe. Then you add Mythic who, if I had been them and I'm not, this is conjecture, might have seen this as a stepping stone onto their next project or just wanted something else to do, I'm guessing here. Mythic saw the cash EA was waving EA saw the potential of an updated Warhammer centric DAoC and we're off. I'm excited, you're excited, the guy on the podcasts is too excited but we watch him anyway and eventually Mythic had to start feeling a little trapped by the IP since they're used to working with their own. EA is breathing down their necks for a launch, any launch, Mythic is hoping that they can get a two party PvP system working as well as a three, I think most of us can agree that is not the case and could be a major downfall for any working MMO PvP titles at this stage, and we are here, beta then launch.

We don't need to rehash the rest but as of 1.3.2 I'm back in and enjoying WAR, yeah really. The distinctive classes are great, a continued stroke of genius not giving us 8 hunter races. As much as I dreaded what WAR was I'm loving it again and now EA pulls the carpet out from under them?! I mean just from their perspective (the folks who worked to bring this pile back) you got to be hurting. So smart business decision or not EA continues to lose my support faster than any gaming company I know, I'd rather kiss Smedley than put more money in EA's pockets. Really, excellent work on WAR and I hope you end up working for someone with a bit more money, tact and heart. Good luck.

Originally posted by pojung

I think we're in a lull at present. Tired of what's out there, but soon to pick up. Everything in life operates by going through stages of feast and famine. We're the latter at present.

Yeah I think we had our Golden Age of MMOs, where that started is another discussion (pre/postUO) but I don't think WoW was what killed it I think we were already headed there once games like WW2 Online (anyone remember running through the French country side for 10 mins.) started popping up, Funcom stopped listening to it's testers, etc. If anything SOE making what it did/does off of EQ was the beginning of the end in a long development cycle. Maybe that's where MMOs differ we can feast while starving. EQ was still going but besides a solitary bright point (IMHO), Shadowbane, I remember my post EQ as mostly trying to figure out why I had an aiming reticule in Planetside if my bullets didn't go where I aimed them. Granted that was my experience and I did enjoy the time I spent with L2 and even CoH early on but as I look back my best MMO days were in UO, then EQ, then SB. I enjoyed all the other games I played but not to the same extent. 

I'm hoping Mythic can bounce back and bring us something new, it's own IP would be even better. i know they are trying hard with WAR but the two party PvP system is played out and if anyone can do it right again you got to hope for the guys that brought us DAoC and WAR is still fun, for me anyway. Other than that yeah Square and BioWare are where most of my hopes are pinned. I don't know why but I still believe Funcom has a trick or two left, Dark Days Are Coming and all. And nothing against Blizz but with them stating they are trying to find a way to get to more people with their next MMO I'm a bit blah about the possibilities. I was hoping for an EQesque game from Blizz to see what they could really do, I know it's a business but the WoW fans gotta grow up at some point and need a new place to play.

I logged in using the same client and account I had for the ten day trial. I had to download a pretty decent sized patch but I can play on the same account now no problems. 

 Updating my 10 day free trial now, expecting to be able to play shortly. Enjoy the Tier 1

Originally posted by Cyraneternal

 

as far as banning for everything, they shouldn't be allowed to if we're PAYING them. you know what happens if you pay someone to babysit for you and they don't do it? You get the money back, you don't pay them for something they didn't do so why should I be paying them for a game I can't play?

Soon after I moved to EQ from UO there was a point where I realized the biggest difference between the two was not the graphic style but the GMs style. UO GMs were there to help us build our game in what was essentially their world, EQ GMs were there to make sure we played their game in their world and this has been how most companies continue today. Bottom line you are paying to be allowed to play in their world as are other paying customers of an unknown age. If your babysitter brought in a friend who taught your kids things you would never want them to know when they are of that age then you would not pay the babysitter, you are the friend, the GMs are the babysitters. This is not new.

 If this is a big name title do us old players a favor and TEST the game. Thanks in advance and congrats.

What am I saying, just test whatever the game is.

 Been trying to figure that one out myself. Honestly I'm not sure if the unlimited trial is activated yet since the site still shows the 10 day trial. (www.warhammeronline.com/trial)