In Bioware We Trust

This. 

Originally posted by Fibsdk

Originally posted by Conley

Originally posted by Fibsdk

Originally posted by Conley

Your reply and the unnessary venom in it doesn't really speak well for your argument. And no, it doesn't make me feel more manly to point to the fact that the style, both artistic and gameplay, of freerealms are targetted at kids. And that is a good thing, since I am a woman. But nice try.

 

I just showed you facts. you haven't shown a thing but personal opinions. Playing the "you insulted me so your argument is 100% invalid" card is so 1998. If you want to take a higher stance then do it with logic and proof

 

An interview with a director is not a fact. A nintendo director will never say that their products are aimed at kids. A Disney director will never say that their cartoons are aimed at kids. You haven't given me a single fact, but what you did do is convince me that you yourself are in fact a kid, or at the very least a very immature adult. Thank you for proving my point.

 

You have no point. Just empty talk. Atleast i can show you a link from the makers. Your little conspiracy theories are of no interest to anybody

Sure, your fantastic. *pats Fiskb*

Originally posted by Fibsdk

Originally posted by Conley

Your reply and the unnessary venom in it doesn't really speak well for your argument. And no, it doesn't make me feel more manly to point to the fact that the style, both artistic and gameplay, of freerealms are targetted at kids. And that is a good thing, since I am a woman. But nice try.

 

I just showed you facts. you haven't shown a thing but personal opinions. Playing the "you insulted me so your argument is 100% invalid" card is so 1998. If you want to take a higher stance then do it with logic and proof

An interview with a director is not a fact. A nintendo director will never say that their products are aimed at kids. A Disney director will never say that their cartoons are aimed at kids. You haven't given me a single fact, but what you did do is convince me that you yourself are in fact a kid, or at the very least a very immature adult. Thank you for proving my point.

Originally posted by Fibsdk

Originally posted by Conley

Freerealms is targetted at kids. When a company says they have a game targetted at "families" that always means its targetted at "kids". The reason that they call it "families" instead of kids, is because kids themselves often get offended when they use "kids". This strategy is used by Nintendo as well and many other companies who make kids games. Now its true that parents will often join their kids in games in family friendly titles, that is no excuse to make the game more challenging, because many mothers and fathers who join the kids have themselves even less experience in gaming then their offspring.

Now any doubt as to whom the game is targetted at should be taken away by simply looking at the website, the characters and the style. The style of freerealms makes WoW look like age of conan. It has a similar style to toontown, that other game targetted at kids...uhm..families. So if you want to compare the difficulty of freerealms compared to older MMO's you should compare it to toontown, not to games like WoW and LoTRO who are clearly targetted at a different audience.

 

And you have this information from where? Oh it's just an opinion? Nevermind then. As far as i know i never compared Free Realms with any of the games you mentioned. I agree those are target at a different audience but not necessary ages but more playstyles. I can speculate just as you that WoW have more kids in it than Free Realms has or ever will have. WoW has all the features of any MMO on the market including raids so that point is moot. To even emphasise it more you get to transform yourself into a cute little elf throwing snowballs at people every winter. Doesn't get more kiddy than that.

The fact you play a different type of game that makes you feel all manly and adult is not a good indicator about what Free Realms is aimed at. You would be surprised about how many adults that does not care about seeing blood splatter on the screen after you just decapitated some foe. Again not a good indicator if it's a kiddy game because it's missing such a feature

The fact you feel family = kids is more a personalized opinion and not a fact. As i mentioned before Free Realms can easily be compared to The Sims when it comes to the cuteness factor with it's music and ease of play. Yet it has a huge adult appeal. Free Realms is no different

 

http://g4tv.com/ces2009/videos/36296/CES-09-Free-Realms-SOE-Interview.html

 

Think about 20 seconds into the interview with the creative director does she state "We wanted to make a game that kids can enjoy and adults can enjoy , just families in general, everybody playing together"

 But ohh..this is a marketing ploy not to offend kids..please don't make me laugh.

 

Your turn to link me something from SoE where they state their primary audience is kids outside your own opinions.

Your reply and the unnessary venom in it doesn't really speak well for your argument. And no, it doesn't make me feel more manly to point to the fact that the style, both artistic and gameplay, of freerealms are targetted at kids. And that is a good thing, since I am a woman. But nice try.

Originally posted by Fibsdk

Originally posted by zachdude

Originally posted by Fibsdk

Originally posted by Ilvaldyr

Originally posted by pencilrick  

Then a 2nd generation of MMO came out and was somewhat more user friendly:  DAOC, Shadowbane, SWG.

The famous 3rd generation held players by the hand with tutorials and quest NPC's:  WOW, EQ2

I don't really get the whole "quest snobbery" thing.

From what I remember from my SWG years, questing there was a case of:

Run to Quest Terminal.
Get quest to kill a hive of <insert mob name here>
Run to hive.
Kill mobs, kill hive.
Run back to Quest Terminal and repeat.

You can't really get much more simple than that when compared to some of the quests in newer games, and I find baffling the argument that modern MMOs are "dumbed down" due to the big floating:

! and ? symbols over quest givers/returners heads.

Wandering around clicking every NPC to try and find quests is neither fun nor challenging .. it's just a timesink.

 

Free Realms take it one step further and gives you a green line to follow to your destination. Then a big brite light fron the sky to light over the npc you are suppose to talk to. I have no problems with question or exclamation marks as long as they let you think for yourself once you accept the quest. Sadly that's not where the games are headed these days

 

Why does everyone rant that this game is too easy. It is for kids.... Kids around 12 or younger aren't going to be vet MMO players and know what to do, maybe some young enough can't read that well, so the guide shows them where to go...

 

It's for families not just for kids. Give me a SoE link where they expressly say the game is geared towards kids ONLY. Lots of adults play it with or without kids. SoE aimed at that which is why they have or will have a family account option. As far as i know kids don't have credit cards and i don't know too many parents willing to have a monthly draw on their cards for their kids if they themselvs aren't involved in some way or another

Freerealms is targetted at kids. When a company says they have a game targetted at "families" that always means its targetted at "kids". The reason that they call it "families" instead of kids, is because kids themselves often get offended when they use "kids". This strategy is used by Nintendo as well and many other companies who make kids games. Now its true that parents will often join their kids in games in family friendly titles, that is no excuse to make the game more challenging, because many mothers and fathers who join the kids have themselves even less experience in gaming then their offspring.

Now any doubt as to whom the game is targetted at should be taken away by simply looking at the website, the characters and the style. The style of freerealms makes WoW look like age of conan. It has a similar style to toontown, that other game targetted at kids...uhm..families. So if you want to compare the difficulty of freerealms compared to older MMO's you should compare it to toontown, not to games like WoW and LoTRO who are clearly targetted at a different audience.

Now with this out of the way, I'm sure that there are many adults joining these servers for the same reason many adults played titles like Pokemon, super mario and watch disney movies. There are simply a lot of adults who are charmed by kiddie style in games and thats fine, no reason to become nervous over this. Disney cartoons didn't mean the end of action movies or horror movies like Saw. Mario, Pokemon and Zelda as succesful as they may be, didn't mean the end for games like Resident Evil and GTA. For the same reason games like Toontown and Freerealms won't mean the end of the traditional MMO's. 

Another comparison is Pepsi, they target their softdrink to teens and young adults with slogans like "the choice of a new generation" and with artist sponsorships like Britney Spears. Even though that was their target market, clearly many Pepsi drinkers are a lot older, so Freerealms being targetted at kids doesnt mean that older folks won't play it, and Sony I'm sure knows this.

Oh and I have one question for anyone playing freerealms. I played the first 10 minutes or so and was kind of put off by the quests and the style, but I do understand that there is karting in this game. I never reached that part, but my question is, what is the quality of karting in freerealms? Is there a real sense of competition. Does it compare even in the slightest sense to mario kart? If it does then maybe i should give it another go.

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Originally posted by bakon2

Originally posted by Superman0X

Originally posted by Player_420

I never said they wernt MMO's, of course thats your only argument? That I said something I in fact did not?

NAME A F2P TITLE, I DARE YOU, WITHOUT ITEM MALLS, AND WITH DEPTH - EDIT: Excuse me....INNOVATION

remember bloodworth you have to NAME one...no atlantica doesnt count cause thats pure item mall

 

I am going to call you on this... and you are not going to like it....

Let me name 3 Games.....

Eve

Everquest 2

World of Warcraft

Free to play is a marketing term, and as such has nothing to do with item malls (which is microtransactions). All three of these games offer free options, and as such just as much free to play as any game with an item mall.

Once you are paying to play, it doesnt matter how you pay (item mall, subscription, etc), the game is no longer free for you. The free option is only for those that dont pay.... and pretty much every competitive game has that today.... and so can be called Free to Play.

 

P.S. The next time you see a store with a Buy One, Get One Free sale, you should go protest that the second one isnt free, and that they are taking advantage of people by saying so.

 

I don't understand what you are saying...Eve, WoW and EQ2 are subscription games, not F2P. 

Only in north America. Every where else, they use a different model. Eve in the NA, also lets you buy credits.

 

Not really. WoW is also subscription based in Europe, Russia, South Korea, Australia and New Sealand. The only region where WoW uses a different model is China.

My main issue with F2P games is that they su..uhm, they don't seem to be on par with subscription based games when it comes to quality of gameplay and funfactor. They are mostly grindathons with average mobs, very little variety and ai in mobs and hardly any deep and unique environments that roleplayers can enjoy. I've tried many of them, and i'd say the exception sort of is guild wars though that is not a completely free to play game as you still have to buy the game boxes (you can pick up the whole series for about 60 dollars now though.

The last free to play games i tried where atlantica online and runes of magic. I couldnt get into the combat system of Atlantica Online, it just wasn't fun to me, and runes of magic just felt like a cheap rip off from WoW. We invest more then money in these games, we also invest a lot of time (time we could use to make money for example) and to invest a lot of time in a game that literally feels like a poor man's WoW is a lot of waste in my opinion.

What I lack from this article on MMORPG.COM is examples. If F2P games aren't so bad, okay fine, but what are these F2P games that aren't so bad you speak of? Because if there is one out there that can really compete with subscription games then I'd really like to know.

Furthermore, I really put questionmarks at these claims that millions of people are playing these F2P games. The thing I've noticed with a couple of these games is they advertise their game as being huge successes, they literally advertise claiming to have over 1 million subscriptions, but then you log in only to find 2-3 servers at max. When you log into WoW europe you can see more then 40 servers many of them heavy population, and then you don't even count the spanish, english, french and russian wow servers. I'm pretty sure that in the west,  WoW alone has more players then all free to play games combined. In the far-east it might be different.

Originally posted by Consensus

problem with healers in almost all mmo's is TOTAL dependency on them.

This is only a problem for non-healers. For healers this is wonderful.

To the guy who is whining about the EULA, have you never read a EULA before? I assume you didn't, because if you did, you wouldn't have posted this. EULA are basically all the same. The gist of any EULA, wether its World of Warcraft or second life, is "in this game you don't own anything, you don't own any of the virtual items we create, you don't have a right to anything we create, we can ban you or lock your subscription at any point,we are in charge, we are the masters of our own universe, we can do in our game what we like". That's not new to Freerealms, it's how these EULA's work across the board. And it make sense too, because if people would have any rights to virtual items the creators could never change the game or rules as they see fit without getting lawsuits up their ass.

If you don't like that, don't play MMO's. If you want a sense of real ownership of your virtual items, make your own MMO, cause all those other MMO's out there make sure in their EULA's that they can do anything to their game without having to fear customers using legal action to stop them.

This is genious to be honest.

Originally posted by Brenelael

Originally posted by Conley

Originally posted by Brenelael

 There are much better and easier to get to places on the net to get porn if thats what your into.

 

Bren

 

If by this you mean going to a regular porn website then I disagree. That is much like saying to a counterstrike addict that there are much better and easier places on the net to go to find a realistic violent environment then counter-strike, like going to the many news sites reporting on the war on terror. Someone who is looking for a book, is looking for a book, someone who is looking for a movie is looking for a movie and someone who is looking for a 3d avatar environment to have cybersex in, is obviously aware of other means of gratification but that is not what they are looking for.

If there is one thing that Second Life has proved, it is that there is a real and substansial demand out there for ERP and other forms of erotic roleplaying in an avatar environment. In this "perverse niche" second life is the only free to play product, and arguably the best one. It's competitors like Sociolotron and Red Light District are all pay to play and limited in scope.

 

There is no doubt that if Linden Labs does not create an easy way for people without creditcard (read non-americans) to verify their age it will quickly starve out. The people who are quick to celebrate this might regret their words later when they find out that many of the "cyber bunnies" return to their own MMO's to cybersex there until something new comes along.

No, I meant that there are plenty of 3D avatar virtual worlds that are just for that purpose. All porn based 3D environments are P2P eventually even Second Life. Granted SL does give you a lot more for free than most. As for it being the best that is a matter of opinion as the other virtual worlds are specifically designed for that purpose and SL isn't. The others are limited in scope only because they only have online cybering as their main reason for existing. They all do this very well and much better than SL as they have features designed around this very purpose... SL doesn't. There is NO free lunch in this world and no matter where you go you will end up paying in one way or another.

 

Bren

 

Edit: Of course if you want to get the ultimate thrill you could always try talking to a real life girl. I hear they can take the virtual experience to a whole new level! (I just noticed from your profile that you are female so in your case a real life man)

I'm physically disabled in a way that it is very much impossible for me to find a real life man. Unless you happen to know any man that are attracted to my kind. Before I lost my ability to walk amongst other things and my husband I had a very active sex life, so I am well aware of the difference between real life sex and virtual sex. I can tell you in many ways real life sex is more enjoyable, but in many ways virtual sex is, because its more intense, because it is love of the mind and because our imaginations, unlike our bodies are limitless. Anyway my sex life is not the point or the discussion.

Back to second life, the only reason to buy linden dollars in second life, is if you want to buy land and build on it. That is really the only thing you need money for. Everything else, you can get for free. There are tons of malls and shops that give out freebies, and a mere afternoon of hopping between them will get you skins + full outfit.

Originally posted by Brenelael

 There are much better and easier to get to places on the net to get porn if thats what your into.

 

Bren

If by this you mean going to a regular porn website then I disagree. That is much like saying to a counterstrike addict that there are much better and easier places on the net to go to find a realistic violent environment then counter-strike, like going to the many news sites reporting on the war on terror. Someone who is looking for a book, is looking for a book, someone who is looking for a movie is looking for a movie and someone who is looking for a 3d avatar environment to have cybersex in, is obviously aware of other means of gratification but that is not what they are looking for.

If there is one thing that Second Life has proved, it is that there is a real and substansial demand out there for ERP and other forms of erotic roleplaying in an avatar environment. In this "perverse niche" second life is the only free to play product, and arguably the best one. It's competitors like Sociolotron and Red Light District are all pay to play and limited in scope.

There is no doubt that if Linden Labs does not create an easy way for people without creditcard (read non-americans) to verify their age it will quickly starve out. The people who are quick to celebrate this might regret their words later when they find out that many of the "cyber bunnies" return to their own MMO's to cybersex there until something new comes along.

A major problem is that I see is that not everyone has a creditcard. Yes, in the U.S. everyone uses them, but in Europe its mostly businessmen and people that travel a lot that have one. The rest simply uses their bank debitcard for payments. They would need to set up an easy and reliable way for non-creditcard users to verify their age or Second Life becomes a ghost town. Because lets be honest here, most if not all of the crowded places in second life are mature places, when you visit the virtual banks, corporations and PG hangouts you'd be very lucky to see more then 3 people at once.

I'm all for age verification, most of the mature content in second life is unfit for minors, but I'm against forcing users to subscribe to expensive creditcards. I'm wondering how Linden Labs is going to solve this issue, because if they don't, you're going to see the biggest exodus in human history since Mozes left egypt with his people.

1. WoW

Obviously Blizzard had a huge fanbase with games like Diablo, Warcraft and Starcraft being played by millions. You can just take the Starcraft fans in South Korea and they are already more people than EQ 1 and 2's entire fanbase. Furthermore, while the most advance gaming systems where having trouble running EQ2, WoW runs great on cheap budget PC's and since only a tiny percentage of gamers have an advanced gaming system that means that the game (EQ2) was already dead on arrival. Furthermore, the attention to detail and polish that Blizzard did made EQ2 look dated out of the box, WoW did away with a lot of grinding, and gave players a choice between grouping and soloing, whereas EQ2's solo focus only came after they figured no one was buying their game.

2. Sequal doesn't fit in MMO's.

So youve already spend 5 years in norrath in EQ and now your just going to do the same in EQ2? It simply doesn't work, its different for single player games because you finish them in a week, so a sequal comes a few years later, and why not, you enjoyed it the first time after all. But people spend years in an MMO, and a sequal for that reason is simply not entertaining. I think Blizzard actually knows this as they have constantly confirmed that their new MMO will not be a sequal. Very smart, people are often sick and tired of a gameworld after spending years in it and knowing every corner and loredetail. They want a new world, restyling an old world can only lead to dissapointment.

3. Marketing

When I bought EQ2, I had to go on an actual quest to obtain the game and it took me 2 weeks to finally find a gameshop who had the copy I was looking for. And this is in the Netherlands, the country that houses the EQ2 european server for gods sake. There is something fundamentally wrong with your marketing if it is easier to get a date with a pornstar then to get a copy of Everquest 2. And even worste, they could have somewhat solved this problem with their online shop, but buying EQ2 plus expansions at sony online is an extreme amount more expensive then buying it in a shop (if your lucky enough to find a copy in a shop that is).

4. Dated technology.

It is amazing that this zoned game looks worste then WoW when WoW can be played by any system yet you need a powerhouse to play EQ2.

Dune

I'm seeing a lot of people mentioning Dune by the way. Obviously Frank Herberts fantastic universe is perfectly fit for an MMO. A dune MMO would be unlike any other Sci-Fi MMO for the simple reason that the Dune Universe is unlike any other Sci-Fi universe. Developers out there should wake up to the possibilities a game of this story would bring, but I don't want some schrub studio making it, it has to be a big project, created by a talented studio and backed up by a wealthy publisher.

GTA

GTA in many ways seems so perfectly fit for an MMO for several reasons. One is that the single player games already seem very much tailored for an MMO with their careful combination between mission based structure and free roaming. A well made GTA MMO game, in my opinion has the potential to dominate MMO sales (at least in Europe and the US).

Caligula

Now who wouldn't want to play in the decadent world and time of Caligula, an empire rotten to the core and on the brink of collapse, barbarians knocking at the gates and a mad and perverse empiror who made Nero look like Mother Theresa. The MMO should be based on Tinto Brass' 1979 film "Galigula" and should naturally be at least mature rated, but preferably Adult Only.

Originally posted by xenoscalibur

Hmm... I'm also interested in full loot

Ah in that case:

UO if graphics aren't important to you.

EVE if you like the idea of PVP in a spaceship.

And you might want to keep an eye on Darkfall. Theres so much hype surrounding this title that at this point its hard to ascertain wether Darkfall is a solid title though, you might want to wait a few weeks/months till the dust is settled and more reviews come in.

Basically what the above guy said. There are a couple of different styles of PVP and there are rulers in each class.

In the battlegrounds pvp section, where 2 sides are automatically balanced in numbers and fight in a closed arena type setting, I would say Guild Wars rules supreme. WoW is a distant second in this category, its certainly not as balanced, but it is a better option if you want a game where the PVE is solid as well.

In RVR/world pvp section, in my opinion WAR holds the best cards. DAoC is solid as well but has the problem like UO that its graphics have become very dated. WoW is a distant second in this category (not counting DAoC), especially Wintergrasp improved mass world pvp enjoyement. WoW is a better option if you want your PVE game to be solid as well, but if you don't care about PVE, WAR wins hands down.  

In the FFA PVP section the players are UO, AOC, EVE and now Darkfall online. UO is probably to dated in graphics now to be enjoyable for a lot of people. Eve has a solid FFA game, but you must like the idea of battling in spaceships and not seeing your character. AoC has a solid FFA game, though "hardcore purists" wilI find the lack of full loot disheartening, and dont know about Darkfall since opinions seem to be divided at this point and I've never tried it myself.

I want Squeenix to make an MMO based on Xenogears (not Saga) and frankly I want them to make it NOW.

Well WoW's maintanence is always on wednesday, and I figure they do it on wednesday so they have monday and tuesday to finetune things, like preparing for a patch or dividing the jobs need to be divided, and then they have thursday and friday to fix things if all hell breaks loose. You surely wouldn't want them to do maintancence on monday when everyone is still trying to recover from the weekend.

The answer is bad management. In fact, SOE is a prime example of how bad management can ruin a business. Everything from having a horrible payment system, a lack of representation in actual shops (its easier to find a gold pot at the end of the rainbow then to pick up a copy of EQ2 in a Dutch shop for example), the NGE debacle, launching games too early, selling chat and communication data to marketing companies and the list goes on and on.

For example, Vanguard, SWG and EQ2 all suffered greatly from being released too early. In the case of Vanguard and EQ2 the games improved after some time, but by then it was already to late to build up a massive subscriber base.

I remember being on the Vanguard beta forums and seeing literally hundreds of beta-testers beg to have the game released later. At the time Brad defended Sony saying it was all him, but if Sony had strong leadership they would have thrown extra money at the game and demand Brad to postpone it for a year of polishing.

Blizzards policy on releasing games is "when it's done". It's the same policy that worked for many of the most succesful single player games like Nintendo's games (Miyamoto had no problem postponing a game for a full year if he wasn't satisfied) as well as Grand Turismo (I remember GT1 was released in Januari, right after the lucrative christmas period because the designers where simply not satisifed in December, Santa Clause and his big wallet be damned).

In my opinion, that is the secret to Blizzards success. Had Sony been in charge of Blizzard, I'm sure both Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 would have already been out in the market, and they would have started work on WoW 2.

Now of course its hindsight, but if I had run Sony I would have not invested in 10+ sub average games, but instead put all my money in one title and make sure the title would not be released until it had reached a level of polish to actually compete with WoW.