Hmm...I guess it's time to make a blurb about MMOs in general. I tried to stay away from the political aspects of this genre, but really it is an almost impossible task. It's ok to try to be ignorant and continue to be blissful playing one's game once in a while, but the hard, cold reality is that one can not forever.
It seems that I am not alone, and the old school MMOers are feeling this empty satisfaction that we believe MMO games should give us. Is this a delusion? Of course not. We are paying customers, not just on the inital purchase, but continuing paying customers...the question is for how long? Most and perhaps all companies say customer service is their top priority. Well how about making a product that you are proud of being a top priority! We have seen the marketing and the administration department rule MMO companies long enough and look at what it has gotten us. Mostly utter junk.
Gone are the days of innovation, and the want of making a good game. Hello to the days of making the most or quickest profit for your investors/shareholders. We have seen how that has gotten us with Vanguard, and AoC. We have seen companies like SOE completely ignoring their player base and do any changes they feel are necessary, which created their image of a bastard company and created a huge exodus of their SWG game. Combined with making tons of updates/expansions to maximize their dollar (i.e. EQ2), I too have shunned them as a company.
I can't blame MMO companies on a whole. They see the massive profits and playerbase of WoW and want a piece of the action. What gaming company would not! I can almost hear the administration leading these companies shouting, "We need an MMO!" when they heard about WoW's numbers. It distictly reminds me of the .com days when Linux companies hit the stock exchange and made stunning turnovers in profits. I remember my CEO of the .com starter company I was working for coming to me at my desk and saying, "I want 200 Linux programmers." I can see these same luntic CEOs and heads of companies ranting the same expressions wanting a piece of the pie.
However, like the .com boom collapse of empty .com companies with no product or idea, but all market hype, buzz words, and the sole idea to sell their companies to a bigger company; the MMO companies are facing the same plight. The community of MMO players (for the most part) have woken up to what is going on. No longer do many believe in MMO games by pure hype alone. We want hard, cold evidence of the game being good. All the buzz words of "epic battles," "pvp," "end game," "player run economy" are done for. Show us! What that means is bring back Free Open Beta and lift the NDA at least a week before release. If the company believes their game is great and is ready for release, then what is the fear of lifting the NDA for CBTs to talk about the game? If the game is so great and ready for release, then what is the fear of letting people tryout the game themselves?
The short answer is that so many MMOs have failed because they were not ready, and in some cases not even close to being ready for release. Currently, there are tons of MMOs being made for the market, and the playerbase is surprisingly growing, rather than strinking to all the upsets of the past few years; however, these companies need to learn that MMOers are not putting up with the shit for much longer. I for one am almost done. I have been playing MMOs since UO's time, which is close to 10 years. Back in the good ol' days, sure things weren't perfect, but it worked because it was new, and the level of competition was not there. Furthermore, companies needed to make a good game otherwise people would stop playing it, which isn't the case now. Moreover, those people of the good ol' days were teenages. Now, 10 years later these "boys" are in college, out in the work force, or married with kids. They expect and require way more detailed thought in gameplay, and innovation than what is currently out there.
We saw Vanguard fail due to utter fail tactics of hardly any QA. How could the company believe they had a solid winner if no one tested the game! It utterly baffels the mind. It's like trying to make a world famous restaurant which will serve hundreds of thousands of people, but not once trying the food on the menu.
We saw AoC fail due the utter crap game design and again QA. The release of their product was so buggy it was unplayable for the majority of the player base. People with even moderate video cards were getting 5-7 FPS. Furthermore, their live patch fixes were wrong or buggy; as well as, some of their decisions on the "correct" fixes (which is the main reason why I left. If the devs add to the problems they believe is a fix, it means they are hopeless and have no clue what they are doing). So again, it comes down to QA!
WAR is failing because it tried to basically be an improved WoW. "They say" ("they" being that guy and the other guy) "that imitation is the best form of flattery," but wait a minute. Why would a logical person leave WoW to play another type of WoW game? Especially, one that is new and buggy, and not as streamlined as the game they are used to. I believe that one of the guy's who worked at Blizzard stated that 80% of the people that left for WAR has returned to WoW. Stop with the cloning already!
We want innovation, thought, and an all around good game that YOU the developers will play and love. And even though there are many great looking MMOs on the horizon, I personally will not preoder another MMO again (I did it for AoC, WAR, and DFO); unless they lift the NDA at least a week before release, and give the players a free Open Beta. Well at least there is one less sucker in the MMO mix...I hope others will follow suit.
I got inspired from this recent MMORPG.com post:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/232526/page/1
P.S.
Even though I no longer play Eve, everything that has been stated so far does not apply to the company CCP and Eve. They are by far the most amazing company I have seen to date for their playerbase. The length and depth they go through...well I wish other companies would take a page from their book. They give a good time for a trial, all their expansions are FREE, and they pump out expansions on a regular bases. They have created a player elected voice for the community. The company then flies these members to the company in Iceland to meet with the developers to discuss changes to the game. They have hired an actual economist to monitor their player run economy, and they did EveTV (CCP paid for all the bandwidth).
Monday, April 20, 2009
Update and Suggestion
Well, sorry for taking so long to update this blog. I had big ambitions to make this a daily thing, but in my heart I knew I would never be able to pull it off. However, I do love writing, and it is a nice place to keep some well keep memories.
Last I wrote we were doing the bank heist. We haven't done it in ages, and I think it's because people have caught on or...to be honest, I am not sure why we haven't. I guess we have better things to do these days, like going around and killing people. The only problem with the bank heist trick is that we first have to find a buyer/seller that has enough of something to make it worth while, then the person also has to agree to travel to that particular city. Sometimes, it can take like 30-45 minutes of traveling. So finding a buyer then the added traveling time, we sometimes wait doing nothing for over an hour. So basically, in that time frame we could have a wandering group of guys PKing people and taking their gear and items, which is more fun and perhaps equal on loot. Oh well, it was absolutely hilarious when we were doing it. We were all laughing our asses off on vent (a program where people can talk over the internet with mics).
One of the members of the guild made a few videos. His selection of music is questionable (recommended to watch with the sound off):
Anyways, since those videos were made, other things have been going on. I'll just write about one incident.
Hmm...let's see, so yeah, we are just basically a small little guild of about 30 people. We have like 8-12 people on at times, so we can't do too much, but what we lack in number we make up in skill and tactics. So for example, a group of us were riding around on our mounts looking to pk people. We then heard that two alliances were going to fight over a hamlet (a very small town in the game) in about 2 hours. So we got the location of the hamlet and headed there. It was in the middle of a forest and we noticed there were giant trees surrounding the hamlet. Most of the guild members had a spell called "launch" which effectively launches you up in the air. We launched ourselves up into the tree tops and waited for the chaos.
We waited for about 45 minutes and then the fun began. The defenders came first, which were about 50 or so and we told them we would help them out. Then the time for the siege started and the attackers arrived, which numbered about 80-100. We got out our bows and staffs (to use magic) and rained down our terror on them. A few of them also had the spell launch, but we were so high up (we did a few launches to get to our spots) that they couldn't reach us. Unfortunately, the defenders got destroyed amazingly fast and we were left all alone (about 8 of us) to defend off about 80 people. Eventually, they surrounded the tree and started attacking us on all sides with arrows and magic. Also, a few of them found their ways up on a tree branch next to our tree so they could attack us on an even level. We called the fight and jumped off and ran into the water. Unfortunately, since my graphics card basically sucks (Nvidia 8700) and my ping is already god awful, I was one of the two guys that died to a hail of their arrows and magic.
Hmm...there were some other interesting fights, but this blog is already too long. Anyways, so far I haven't had a chance to play for a week or so because of personal issues of trying to find a new job and moving, so it's doubtful I will have any news of Darkfall for a few weeks.
So far the game is ok. I think it has massive potential, as I always thought; however, there are some issues that I am unsure if the devs will address. The world is utterly stunning, and streamless. However...well I don't want to get into all the details of it's issues, but I guess one glaring one is the problem of zerging, and how the world is basically changing into 3 big alliances ruling the game world. It reminds me of some of the servers on Shadowbane where it was basically 2 alliances...so in that regard DFO fails.
Last I wrote we were doing the bank heist. We haven't done it in ages, and I think it's because people have caught on or...to be honest, I am not sure why we haven't. I guess we have better things to do these days, like going around and killing people. The only problem with the bank heist trick is that we first have to find a buyer/seller that has enough of something to make it worth while, then the person also has to agree to travel to that particular city. Sometimes, it can take like 30-45 minutes of traveling. So finding a buyer then the added traveling time, we sometimes wait doing nothing for over an hour. So basically, in that time frame we could have a wandering group of guys PKing people and taking their gear and items, which is more fun and perhaps equal on loot. Oh well, it was absolutely hilarious when we were doing it. We were all laughing our asses off on vent (a program where people can talk over the internet with mics).
One of the members of the guild made a few videos. His selection of music is questionable (recommended to watch with the sound off):
Anyways, since those videos were made, other things have been going on. I'll just write about one incident.
Hmm...let's see, so yeah, we are just basically a small little guild of about 30 people. We have like 8-12 people on at times, so we can't do too much, but what we lack in number we make up in skill and tactics. So for example, a group of us were riding around on our mounts looking to pk people. We then heard that two alliances were going to fight over a hamlet (a very small town in the game) in about 2 hours. So we got the location of the hamlet and headed there. It was in the middle of a forest and we noticed there were giant trees surrounding the hamlet. Most of the guild members had a spell called "launch" which effectively launches you up in the air. We launched ourselves up into the tree tops and waited for the chaos.
We waited for about 45 minutes and then the fun began. The defenders came first, which were about 50 or so and we told them we would help them out. Then the time for the siege started and the attackers arrived, which numbered about 80-100. We got out our bows and staffs (to use magic) and rained down our terror on them. A few of them also had the spell launch, but we were so high up (we did a few launches to get to our spots) that they couldn't reach us. Unfortunately, the defenders got destroyed amazingly fast and we were left all alone (about 8 of us) to defend off about 80 people. Eventually, they surrounded the tree and started attacking us on all sides with arrows and magic. Also, a few of them found their ways up on a tree branch next to our tree so they could attack us on an even level. We called the fight and jumped off and ran into the water. Unfortunately, since my graphics card basically sucks (Nvidia 8700) and my ping is already god awful, I was one of the two guys that died to a hail of their arrows and magic.
Hmm...there were some other interesting fights, but this blog is already too long. Anyways, so far I haven't had a chance to play for a week or so because of personal issues of trying to find a new job and moving, so it's doubtful I will have any news of Darkfall for a few weeks.
So far the game is ok. I think it has massive potential, as I always thought; however, there are some issues that I am unsure if the devs will address. The world is utterly stunning, and streamless. However...well I don't want to get into all the details of it's issues, but I guess one glaring one is the problem of zerging, and how the world is basically changing into 3 big alliances ruling the game world. It reminds me of some of the servers on Shadowbane where it was basically 2 alliances...so in that regard DFO fails.
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