you got me, damn you gw2 withdraw.

Good Show. Nice ding at the end.

ya bill ! Good cast. I too am having gw2 withdraw.

I don't think this talk of players wanting sandboxy games will end.

..and I like it.

Nice show.  Short, to the point, and newsy.  I like it.

Good piece on the sandbox.  And no, I don't want EA doing the next big sandbox.  I'm not sure who could pull it off at this point.

Yeah, someone please make the sandbox fans a AAA sandbox so they can all go and live there......Personally I suspect it will never happen because publishers know there just isnt the market, or if it does happen, it will fail, just like all the other recent AAA sandboxes

People love a sandbox MMO but when you look at it in terms of what it means, most people will end up not playing it. Take a look at Eve. Starting off your basically nothing and stand virutally no chance of 'making it' in the game. The power established has control and the only thing that might get you to reach the top is if that power for some reason just quits.

The reason DayZ works is since its all individual servers. If it was all one massive server you would see people being constantly ganked by far more geared individuals and all the resources and good being controlled, leaving new players very little they can do to gain progress. 

With Sandbox that gains 'progress' for players, it will involve grinding, and those at top will always stay at top so long as they play, and newer players will find that pedistal more and more impossible to reach.

@Noam: My wife likes it, and I prefer she enjoy my looks more than you my good man. But thanks for the kind criticism! 

I'll get off your lawn now too, sorry for messing up the grass.

Great video, enjoyed the community spotlight segment regarding DayZ, and I think you made a great point: as much as I want a popular AAA sandbox, I'm not sure someone outside independent development could handle it correctly.

@Torvaldr: I really don't know either. Part of me wonders if it won't be the "standalone" version of Day Z that makes it really work. Will Dean and his crew take the time necessary (and the money earned) from the Arma II sales (Dean's a part of that dev team now) and turn this into a truly stellar zombie sandbox? Will they use the bright and shiny engine being used on Arma III? 

I sure hope so.

Sandbox zombie mmo ftw! Sick and tired ot theme park hand holding mmos. Good job with the vid!

Honestly, thank you for just reporting the news about the BioWare Austin layoffs and accurately quoting the official $100 mllion dollar figure rather than fearmongering about people leaving the studio or quoting the false $300 million figure.  

I could have done without the shot at EA towards the end, but I guess this just wouldn't be mmorpg.com if someone wasn't needlessly complaining about a major publisher somewhere.

Good piece this week Bill, not that the others weren't, but good stuff. 

And today, Bioware fired everyone working on SWTOR and released this press release.

"As with the launch of any MMO, the size and skillset of the teams needed to maintain the game, is different than the teams that built it."

Nothing to see here folks, move along.

yea the milk cow ad was the best........

First off. its the 23rd not the 23th.... second.. Give credit to Day Z for the footage that you mislead people into believing was War Z..... All the footage shown was not War Z.. All that is released about War Z is some stupid concept screen shots.. Day Z is the real deal.  

I like MMOFTW i think Bill has a definite perspective on the future of MMOs

Wow, thats some nerve to say "Would you like someone like EA (emphise , pause) to be in control of your sandbox?". While large companies latly seem to be the anti-everything. One has to note that choices corporations make might not always be the best for everyone they are not always the worst as well.

You boast planetside, yet planetside is owned by a larger company known as Sony. Where is the "sony" remark. meh I don't take fault to any or all, but in the end I give you kudos or a "you got balls" image to bite the hand that feeds you. Good luck getting those future interviews for anything EA.

The guy can't label every huge company that screws up their gaming products. 

Bill poked at the nose of Electronic Arts and thats a damn fitting nose to be poking at, whether or not other studios/companies have equal noses or not. 

Great episode.

Astounded that someone from MMORPG just called out EA.  I love it.  I beyond love it, I now would like to have puppies with MMORPG.com

Another great episode thanks Bill, we can tell you are doing a great job.  Thanks for calling out ea that was a good one.

Good stuff, BM!  You're a gamer and it shows.  Nice shot across the bow too!  Bravo.

For now on I'm making all my avatars look like Bill Murphy.

(kidding Bill)

Runescape, 150 mil of bots, 50 mil real players accounts created about 100k playerbase these days so really about 1 mil are playing which is still pretty good. GW2 = endgame lvl 1 or lvl 2 in PVE.  Too bad SOE is doing PS2 otherwise I'd like to play it. Once DayZ goes standalone and gets further along I might look more into it I'd love to see it go pro while still staying indie. If I ever play a game where I can customise the mini picture on the side of your name when you are in a guild I might make it look like Bill Murpheys head lol jk.

For the person above me, they have about 1mil paying members and about maybe 5mil active free players

It's bit misleading that you have footage of Day-Z on when you are talking about War Z. Should be a note or something on the screen at the least.

what happend to posting these on facebook, it was nice to recieve these videos in my feed! please start posting these on FB again! Thanks!

Finally some good looking postapocalyptic mmo. GW2 for casual playing and War Z for serious business

Was ok. Intro was not too aMOOzing to me. I am curious on what is going to happen with EA and MMOs as seems to always go bad.

I don't see Bill's remark about EA at the end to be a "pot shot" at all.

It's a very legitimate question.

Consider this...

Before around November of 2004, most big name publishers and development houses wouldn't have touched MMOs of any kind with a ten foot pole. They weren't "proven" enough to their satisfaction to bother even trying.

Then WoW happened, and that all changed.

Suddenly, MMOs had the attention of the big companies, like EA, Activision, etc. Not because they suddenly realized "oh, gee, these really can be a fun experience and we should make one". But becuase they realized "Oh, look at all the people playing that WoW game. That's a lot of money we could be making too". And so they jumped on the bandwagon, and we see what happened to the MMO genre after that. It became a non-stop routine of "me-too" clones attempting to steal a piece of Blizzard's behemoth.

Consider this...

Cash Shops existed and were quite popular in Eastern countries for several years, at least, prior to even being introduced in the West. Most big companies wouldn't touch them with a ten foot pole. Why? They didn't understand them and it wasn't a proven revenue model to them. "Making money by letting people play for free" must have seemed pretty counter-intuitive to them.

Then they started to see the kind of money being made through Cash Shops. Not to mention illegal RMT. Then they started to see how much Cash Shops and RMT made compared to what they were making on box sales and subscriptions alone. Suddenly, it "clicked" and they were embracing F2P/Cash like it was the very air they needed to breathe.

They didn't suddenly decide "Oh gee! If we switch to this F2P model, then we can let more people play and enjoy our game without paying us anything! Won't that be swell!". No, they did it because they saw how Cash Shops could mean more $$$$ for them.

The big companies have since been turning the revenue model upside down and inside out, trying any and every angle they think might bring them in even more $$$, without necessarily improving the player experience in the process.

So now consider this...

Sandbox MMOs have not been given a lot of attention, or even any for that matter, because right now, they are where MMOs and Cash Shops were several years ago. They aren't a proven model yet, and so they stay away.

The moment someone comes along and finds a setup for a true sandbox MMO that is also highly profitable, you bet the big guys, like EA, Activision, SOE and the rest will be all over it as well, finding every way they can to squeeze more money of their players.

good one bill woot  on old republic  when i was playing guild wars 2 i was hearing some of the voice overs from old republic i saw that was awsome to help those guys that got layed off and went to guild wars 2

saw a  article on that  so iam gessing old republic poly go down hill ? do to bad stuff that EA is doing any one from old republic think that star wars old repoublic will go down hill or some thing ? yeah iam waitng for guild wars 2 happly : )

oh bill love the cow add to i  rember that lol

bill make youir own add   like  the 'hot pockets'   but for guild wars 2

like this  ' u dont need -da date?  u need   da- guild war 2222222'

I'll make it more clear next time, but the community spotlight portion is the part I reserve in the show for a little editorial commentary. Ergo? I'll say whatever's on me wee little noggin.  ;)

It's one thing to theorize on DayZ style sandbox MMOs coming out in the future, but please dont straight up lie to the viewers in the comments and act like one has been announced when you are just wondering about it.