Is the dumb money on MMORPGs?

[Straybow]

Gaaaaah! Twitchy games!

[FrostyBoy]

No, MMORPGS are still in their infancy stages. The potential for these types of games is huge.

Yes, there is going to be a huge flop in MMORPG's coming up soon, but in the long run, this is a good thing, competition always makes way for better things.

There are still a lot of great ideas for MMO's; imagine Civilization as an MMO, it could work really well on a grand scale and maybe addictive as hell.

The main drawback I felt with WoW was the fighting animations. What MMO's need to start applying is phyiscs, but I'm not sure how much data needs to be transferred for that to work online. The main plugin I am talking about is what will be used in the upcoming GTAIV. Euphoria.

http://download.naturalmotion.com/25tutorials/endorphin_2.5_tutorial_09_Multiple_Characters.avi

Of course, this only need to be applied for players and NPC's. Physics should not apply to the world itself, that would just create problems.

[FrostyBoy]

Here's another video: http://www.naturalmotion.com/files/d...ria_studio.avi

And description:
Animations are not canned but are generated on-the-fly by the CPU as the game is played. Every tackle is your tackle, every haymaker is your haymaker.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Kassiopeia
I played WoW with two of my friends in the same guild but I managed to get rid of it after six months. I really hope that the desire to be like WoW is a fad and that one of these days we'll get MMORPGs that are actually interesting and fun to play instead of being a grind. Of course WoW didn't invent the grinding sort of MMORPG, but it popularized it and used an existing fan base and mythology to make it one of its kind among MMORPGs in size. Guild Wars is pretty much the pinnacle of the nongrind right now with its PvP where success is based on skill rather than time spent playing. The PvE wasn't much to write home about, though.

It's like Mark Twain's old wisdom, Huckleberry Finn got people to paint the fence for him when he started charging money for it. It's as boring and monotonous as work, but since you're paying for it and it's supposed to be a game you're doing it all day long and convince yourself it's fun. I felt disgusted with myself and wondered where all those hours had gone once I realized just how ridiculous WoW's gameplay was.

Not that I disagree MMOs can move in new directions, but I think you underestimate how well MMOs like WoW leverage basic human psychology.

[snoopy369]

[q=Soren Johnson]There is some light in the PC gaming world. World of Warcraft, for instance, is a massive hit, and the upcoming Spore looks not only creative and different, but promising. The MMO and other social networking games could become the norm for PC gaming, with big-ticket titles growing rarer with each passing year. Johnson added that MMOs are "successful because you can't pirate WoW. You cannot pirate an MMO. Period." Therefore, he said, "game design on the PC is going to bend toward persistence."[/q]

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2102189,00.asp

Soren's comments talking about the future of gaming in a pirate's world...

[Dis]

civiliazation as a mmo huh?

I'm trying to think how it could work. The problem with mmo's now is there is no ending. I kind of like an ending.

In civilization there must be progress. Everyone wants to work their way up to tanks (at least I do ). I don't want to spend 3 months playing a mmo before I finally get to tanks.

[DrSpike]

3 months is nothing.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Makahlua
ETA: Also! No game offers a 'fun' way to level up a crafting skill, either(at least that I've seen. Someone prove me wrong!). It's all 'grab a ridiculously large amount of materials, to the exclusion of decorating your house/room in your bankbox; setup macro to save you from an RSI and read a book at the compy while it runs'. Whee. Fun.

That's how failsafe one-click crafting systems like in EQ1 and WoW are (well you could fail in EQ1, but it was purely random, there was nothing you could do). There are much more sophisticated systems, where crafting is a minigame and not a one-click business, where events occur several times in a crafting process that need your attention and according reaction, where items can have different quality levels and thus, different properties and level requirements. Examples are crafting in EQ2 and Vanguard. They demand your permanent attention, you will NOT read a book during crafting or you will fail. They're not fun either, grind remains grind, but at least they're not a completely dull button mashing but require some skill, strategy and experience.

[Skanky Burns]

I like Eve's version of crafting. It isn't fun per se, but the decisions you need to make to weigh up make it interesting, and the amount of interaction time needed for the actual production is minimal. Skills (up to a certain point) determine the cost and speed of production. But even once you have maximised these relatively small skills, there are other ways to reduces costs or increase production speed by researching the blueprints for each item. Is it worth using up one of your valuable research slots for 2+ weeks or is it better to get more costly items to market asap? They require skill, strategy and experience, but without the need for grind. It should be noted that while production or research takes place, your character does not need to actually be involved apart from starting the job and then receiving the results at the end. You can fly wherever you want, do whatever you want in the meantime.

Research to get tech-2 blueprints is another story though. It suceeds or fails randomly, and even when it does succeed, the blueprint you get may be named rather than tech-2, which aren't worth as much generally. Since each attempt costs a significant amount of money (upwards or 50mil isk for modules), research actually increases grind.