ooh, I'm famous. lol.

I think our definition of burst gaming may differ.  Burst gaming is what I do on an xbox, or something like playing through Bioshock infinite.  If I am playing a game for more than 2 months, I don't really count that as burst gaming.

I absolutely will not put any money into a game before I have played it and know that I enjoy it and am going to be playing it for a while.  I have spent money in every F2P I have played long term but never in the first few weeks.  If I have to pay to level at an appropriate rate, I'll just quit.  If I have to pay for basic convenience, I'm gone.  I will pay for character slots if I know I'm going to make more alts.  I will pay for playable content such as new zones and quest packs.  

I think the games you see switching payment models are different in that they already have a considerable amount of content available to new F2P players.  The thing is most of the games that have made the switch haven't released any real content, 90% of the "new content" is just more stuff you can buy in the store.  The games as games are pretty much dead(if life is having a growing and expanding world with new content).  Also these games have already paid for their initial development, so they are basically paying for overhead.  A new from the ground up F2P has to pay for all that development, and if it is too shallow and short people aren't going to hang around or spend money and they aren't going to recomp that cash.

I honestly can't think of a completely from scratch F2P game that I have enjoyed playing.

IMHO if you want to make money in a F2P, you can't feel like you need to spend money.  If I feel like I need to spend, I'll just play something else.  They have to make you feel like you want to spend money.  Not because it is hard or inconvenient if you don't but because their is additional fun and value to be had if you do.  So many F2P games I have played fail here.

Originally posted by jtcgs

Its crap like those tests that try to cram everyone into just a few categories that helped bring about the over simplified MMOs we have today.

Trying to create just a few categories allows companies to start thinking that they do not need real depth to their games, or variety and THAT is the reason why so many companies cant figure out WHY their games are failing.

In the end it's all about trying to understand the player more so they can craft a game that they enjoy more.  When you have millions and millions of players you cannot craft a game for every type of player that possibly exists.  You have to break players down into groups, decide on who your market it, and where the focus of the game lies.  Actually it is when games try to please everybody they fail because they end up being unfocused and pleasing nobody.   If you look at Wildstar this is exactly what they are doing with Paths, and that game has depth coming out it's ass.

I haven't played this but I really don't see the difference between something like this and Dead or Alive 5.  Both blatantly use the female body to sell their games.  Yet Dead or Alive doesn't catch that much flack for it.  Dead or Alive is actually a really good game if you give it a chance.

The reality is games, movies, television, commericals objectify women AND men, and use "sexy" to sell their products all the time.  If you are disgusted by this, I honestly don't see how you can step out of you door in the morning and live in the real world.

This site already had 2 features slamming this game without even really giving it a shot.  I don't think we needed another one if the reviewer wasn't actually going to play the game for any length of time, and not give it an unbiased review. 

Just like I wouldn't ask someone who hates SF games to review an SF game, it is somewhat pointless to have a guy who hates tits to review a titty game.  Everybody who has visited your site has seen all the ads you display and already knows the game has tits and a hentai vibe, what people want to know is about the mechanics, how does it play, what is end game like, is it pay to win or just pay to see boobs, etc... etc... you know the kind of discussion you would normally find in a game review.  Not, the mechanics are pretty good except OMG boobs!  I think I'm gonna be sick! 

I would settle for people not bickering and calling each other names.  Things like mob stealing, node stealing, and other forms of harassment that effect a players ability to play the game should be dealt with as much as possible by having mechanics that make it difficult and not advantageous to do so.

Frankly people being silly, dancing naked or whatever is not a huge deal unless it is somehow affecting your ability to play the game.  As far as names go if they aren't blatantly and obviously sexist or racist they should be fine, complaints like his name spelled backwards or is an anagram for a bad word really make me roll my eyes.(unless we are talking RP server, where they should be able to have special rules)

What most games need is feature specific bans.  WoW only bans you for like a couple hours, and it bans you from the whole game when it might have just been a chat issue.  For people acting like an ass in chat ban them from chat for a whole week for a first offense, but only from chat.(they could still use guild chat and party chat).  

I agree with the premise as I too enjoy different games depending on my mood. 

However I would like to speak about this bit from the article

"For some reason, excellence isn’t everything in this day and age of choice. With the gradual shift from maintaining  long-term adoptees to making games fun for more people in short bursts, the paradigm of online gaming is shifting as well."

I think the question is making games fun for short bursts only a good design match for F2P? I honestly don't see how it could be.  I am not going to put money in a game that I don't put a lot of time into.  If I was a F2P game designer I would be aiming more for maintaining long term adoptees than short burst game players.  If they want people to spend money in their games it seems like making quality games with stories and/or action that really suck you into their world and keep you there would be the way to go.

If there really are that many people upset about it, it is just another example why F2P games are just as hard to develop in their own way.

You have to put enough in to attract players, you have to have enough content for them to stay, you have to make them want to spend money without making them need to spend money to have fun.  If you make it too restrictive people quit before spending a dime, if you don't make it restrictive enough, people stay but never spend a dime.  You have to keep adding fluff to the store to keep people paying.  And all of this keeps them so busy, very little time to make new content(as in stuff you play not stuff you wear).

Where is an a sub game, they have to simply add enough new content to the game so that subscribers feel they are getting value, but so long as you make new and interesting content you are good to go.  Mainly the things that should interest the developers are the same things that interest the players, is the game fun, why do I logon, what new things have I enjoyed for my subscription.  Where as in a F2P game what the player wants is at odds with what the developer wants.  In a F2P game the player wants to have fun without spending money, and the developer only wants to find more ways to take the players money.

Considering we know absolutely nothing about the game is pretty hard to say whether or not it would be good with a F2P model.  However a change in the income model would not require this kind of a hard reset.  Chances are much more likely it is a core design issue, as in what kind of game it is(MMOFPS, MMORPG, etc...) or there was some major technological issues they were facing that they needed to redesign to fix.

Also, if you can't find people willing to play your game for a subscription, sure you can possibly make money nickel and dimeing them with F2P.  However a subscription provides much more stable income.  Considering less than 40% of F2P players EVER buy anything from the online store(and that number gets much smaller when you are talking about reoccurring purchases)  you need to have considerably more players to be profitable in a F2P game.  Also more players means more overhead, so you spend more on things like support and hardware.  The up side is that because people aren't paying a sub they aren't pushed to provide content at a specific rate.  The thing is I really don't think Blizzard would have trouble getting subs if they went that route, so you have to think what is the up side for them to go F2P?

Originally posted by keithian

Originally posted by superconducting

I disagree with the theme of this article and frankly am a little perturbed at the choice of the title.

I do not feel there are any significant "Concerns" as this article seems to suggest. 1st person view is a welcome feature that Zenimax should be praised for implementing. There is simply no strong argument against having more options on how to play the game. Players will naturally play in the mode they are most effective or comfortable with.

You say there is no situational awareness? I say this:

1) The directional hit indicator (shown in the demo) clues you in on where you are being hit

2) Perceptiveness and vigilance is more important than having a complete view. Good players know to keep an eye on their flanks and look behind themselves when needed. I still top the charts most of the time when playing Chivalry medieval warfare (a PVP game) in 1st person view.

I totally agree with you. They can't help it as they are still having orgasms over Wildstar. I mean, There wasn't even an ounce of concern with Everquest and is it really so hard for your finger to use a mouse scroll wheel which is avery natural movement for any MMO player? Since when is giving people options for playing a concern? I play Skyrim totally in first person because it feels more immersive. The animations in 3rd person are clunky and not as immersive. I agree with one of the posters above that there is a large audience who will play that care more about immersion than these ridiculous concerns in this article. Poorly titled and themed. 

Couldn't agree more.  Not sure what the concern is, just about every recent MMORPG I have played let's you play in first person by simply zooming all the way in if that is your thing.

Wow the review gave the most praise to the areas I found least worthy of praise.

The graphics while not bad, are definitely not on the good side.  The character art looks like it was designed by somebody completely different than the game art.  Characters look very cartoony with the big eyes, hell they even made the half-orc female look cute, and they look very out of place in the realistic world.  Even with that aside I found everything to look very bland, and I don't mean dark like ESO, I just mean bland.

The combat felt very clunky.  There is a good chance I wasn't used to it, but it felt like combat animations were keeping me from moving when I needed to be moving, and moving wasn't canceling what I was doing at the time it would just move very sluggishly until the move I was in the middle of finished.  Didn't feel performance related as the game felt very light on requirements, bug maybe, or maybe I am just supposed to make a bunch of cancel action macros or something.  Still overall the combat felt more suited to a game controller than to a keyboard/mouse setup, and I think people like me that are used to the more traditional keyboard mouse setups used by MMORPGs are going to need more time to get used to it.

Originally posted by Rhinotones

...snip...

Are they stepping back from Titan to save WoW from its seemingly imminent demise? Lets be honest here, at the current rate it's losing subs it won't be sustainable in the not too distant future with what they pour into it $ wise in patches, updates and expansions. Are they going to try to flog a dying horse that isn't quite dead yet?

 ...snip...

 

Extremely unlikely, unless they are lieing to us.  If Titan was in a good place they wouldn't just pull people off.  They have stated the people are being shifted to other teams, WoW was just an example of several others.  We don't know if 1 guy or 70 guys got shifted to WoW.  If they were planning something big for WoW you can bet your ass they would be advertising it, both to pull some people back and hopefully stop people who are thinking about leaving.  

When a game is first released and there isn't much information online yet, a tutorial can be useful.  Frankly though, I think the job of the tutorial is not simply to teach you how to play but also to set the tone for the game.   Most games the story can be pretty sparse in the mid levels, so it is important to pull people in and get them invested in the story right away, but people aren't going to want to listen to a long ass cutscene.  So the tutorial is a good time to get the story rolling in between some relatively simple tutorial quests. 

Honestly though if the game does a good job of pulling the player in, and the controls are relatively intuitive you don't really need a tutorial.  As most games you don't start off with super hard mobs and 30 abilities there is usually plenty of time to learn while you play.

If you are talking about a B2P or sub game however, I won't buy the game if it doesn't have some form of limited trial available, which generally amounts to a tutorial and maybe a little bit after.

Originally posted by M1sf1t

If you get to the open (or closed beta) and the game is crap then you can expect it to be crap once it is launched. Prior to that all reports on the game should be taken with a grain of salt be they positive or not. Also NEVER, EVER pre-order a game unless you have played it through and through in a open beta. This includes sampling the "end game" content.

This.  100% This.

Originally posted by NetSage
I think it was due to the change in the market.  When WoW came out MMOs were not the giants and everyone game they are today.  People for the most part now know what a mmo is what they like about them.  So I forsee a much more in depth system with their next game instead of a simple friendly WoW.

I would love to see that, but all the signs point the other way.  If you look at D3, if you look at WoW patches, if shows that Blizzard continues to head more in the direction of simplification and not in depth designs.

Originally posted by Arakazi
Unlike some people on here I haven't a clue what Titan is or anything about the game.

Blizzard has put out some information on what it isn't.  Other than that I don't think anyone knows what it *is*.  Mostly it is just speculation.  The excitement comes from the love of WoW.  Honestly the game could be total crap and it would still sell tons of boxes.

Originally posted by keithian
Savage the only thing I will agree with you up until this point is that I don't like that Zenimax has taken the SWTOR approach to marketing. I don't want to see trailers, previews, etc. I want actual gameplay videos. However, knowing that, it doesn't necessarily mean that they will have the same end result as SWTOR. They may. They may not. Ill be one of the first to criticize this game if it isn't a fun experience. 

Contrary to popular belief, SWTOR had an awesome release.  What killed them was not the game that shipped, it was their failure to follow up on the game that shipped by providing fixes and value in the form of new content to their players in a timely manner.  Their first month sales were higher than any other previous MMO or MMO expansion.

I'm pretty sure ESO would be pleased if they could sell 2 million copies in the first month.  

Also I agree that it would have been nice if Suzie would have put in more than an hour into Skyrim as Skyrim is a huge game.  Frankly it would be like comparing a game to WoW when you have only played the starting area in WoW.  Now really I would love it if she had actually played Daggerfall, as all of the different lands in ES kind of have their own feel.  But you kind of have to use your imagination a lot with Daggerfall graphics.  But saying it feels like Daggerfall based on Skyrim, is like going to Italy and saying it feels like England having only gone to America.

Originally posted by Jaedor

I'm guessing one overarching factor sent it back to the drawing board: Titan has been in development for years and its tech is already old.

These guys aren't some noob game developers, planning your tech for the future is pretty fundamental to making games as most games have a long development process.  So really I doubt this is it.

Also some other game beating them to market is also unlikely.  Taking something somebody else did and making it better is pretty much what they excel at.  

To the comment about D3 being a success, D3 was a financial success.  It sold a lot on the coattails of diablo 2, and many of the people who bought it were let down.  With a metascore of 3.8(out of 10) from player review it is not a success if you define success based on whether or not people think the game is good.

I don't think it was the tech, or another game, I think Blizzard just wasn't happy with it and/or it wasn't getting good feedback from internal review, and the changes required to fix some of the problems were likely underlying design issues that required big changes.

From the article:

" Let's not kid ourselves, unless we're playing PvP, other people's purchases are little more ideas."

This is so untrue.  How people acquire items in the game affects the perceived value of said items, which in turn affects how people play the game.  Nothing happens in a vacuum.  One players feelings may not be important, but an MMO isn't created by just mindlessly throwing a bunch of people together and saying "play!".

Creating an MMO is about creating an environment, that encourages desired behavior, and discourages undesired behavior.  There are a lot of complex systems all interacting with each other, and one small change can cause a ripple of effects throughout the entire game.  

" The writing was on the wall: they needed to change or close-up shop. Today, Bioware has the second largest subscription MMO in the West. Free-to-play, at least in the short term, saved them."

They needed to provide value to their subscribers if they wanted subscribers to continue giving them money.  They decided providing value was too hard and decided to go F2P, and create artificial value for subs by pissing on nonsubs.  Also when they second largest subscription MMO in the West, they aren't counting only subs they are also counting F2P accounts.  Not really a fair comparison for other sub only games that don't have a bunch of free accounts to bolster their numbers.

I personally think there is room for both kinds of games.  The thing is with many(not all) F2P games they have pretty good value for a starting free player but because the majority of added content is fluff, a player that actually likes to play quickly runs out of stuff to do and leaves. 

Originally posted by maplestone

Originally posted by jbombard

You wouldn't do a book review unless you have read the whole book.  The same should be true for games.

There's no such thing as "the whole game" for an MMO (at least not for anything I personally would call an MMO).  There's a subjective component of what you choose to do with it beyond simply the story arc at hand.

But when it comes to the basic look-and-feel, controls and advancement style, the impressions of the first few hours (once you've adjusted to any unique elements of the UI) are unlikely to be wildly different from the impressions of a few months later.  The only question mark is whether there is a radical shift in gameplay at some point (if you want to write a review of the raids, you can't do that at level 1 in most games),

 

I can see some people are taking "whole book" way too literally.

It is like reviewing a PnP D&D module.  You can't determine what each DM will do with it, however you can read it and speak as to the quality of what is provided for the DM to work with.  

An MMO has many parts, you cannot call it a review if you only played one aspect of it.  You cannot comment on raiding if you just talked to a guy.  At that point it isn't your review it is just something somebody else said.  How can you comment on the story if you only saw the introduction.  

Like I said before what most people put up for an MMO review is not a review, it is a "first impressions", and there is nothing wrong with that but they should call it that.  If they are going to call it a review, they should be very clear on what aspects of the game they reviewed or perhaps do a feature review(for example a "dungeons review" or a "raids review", or a "PvP review").  While there may not be a finite end like there is with a book, chances are if the review is out in the first week, they only read the back cover. (I'm not asking for a detailed analysis on class balance and group dynamics in end game raiding, I'm asking that they have stepped foot in a raid)

Also in the case of a sandbox MMO, even though their may be no end, you sure as hell can try out the various systems and see how they interact with each other. 

Lol.  This cracked me up the first time they complained about Scarlet Blade.  I don't know if it is a good game or not, but the "review" they had indicated they hadn't actually played it so apparently they don't know either.

Have these people never played the Dead or Alive fighting games.  I really don't see how they are different.  Guys like boobs, if they are shallow for using boobs to sell games, so are 99% of the games out there maybe not to the same degree but they all do it just the same.

The thing that cracks me up the most is, they complain about people using boobs to sell games, while using adds from those very same companies to generate revenue for the web site.  Hypocrite much?  LMAO.