[MUD-Dev] MMORPG Cancellations: The sky is falling?

[Threshold RPG]

On 4 Jul 2004, at 17:29, Derek Licciardi wrote:

> What are the current hopes for Dragon Empires, Worlds of Warcraft,
> Guild Wars, etc?  All of them start with a combat engine throw in
> a beautiful graphics engine and build a game from there tacking on
> features until it's called an MMO.  Not exactly the focus you're
> talking about being required for these games.

I don't want to come off as a Blizzard fanboy, but WoW has extremely
rich world design and history, an emphasis on meaningful questing,
and a corporate history of attending to every detail of gameplay. I
have intentionally not followed WoW too closely because I love
Blizzard's games and reading about them too much makes me
impatient. :). But even from what I have read certainly indicates
they are focusing HEAVILY on story which is different than most
other MMORPGs out there.

Guild Wars has no monthly fee. That alone is a pretty big USP. :)

> This months CoH review has this description as its low point for
> the game: "Not much depth; enemies and dungeons lack variety; no
> PvP; $14.95 / month subscription fee".  A low point is that you
> have to actually pay for the game???  Not exactly a glowing
> response to an investment worth three times what it takes to make
> an average console game.

I know I'm starting a huge tangent here, but I can't help myself.

Have you played CoH? My wife and I have, and it has less content
than your average console game. I believe what the reviewer is
getting at there is that $15 a month is on the high end of the MMO
spectrum and there doesn't seem to be ANYTHING in CoH to justify
that.

I have read that CoH had over $10 million invested in it, and from
playing it I honestly boggle at where all the money went. It is a
pretty game with a well crafted interface and a lot of character
creation variety. That's where the content ends. The areas all look
the same (same tileset throughout the entire game), same buildings,
same structures, same streets, the missions/quests are the same at
level 2 as they are at level 40, the mobs are all basically humans
with different outfits on (with a very few exceptions), you "pull"
everything the same, everything gives the exact same amount of exp
and money based on its con (an even con mob of ANY type in ANY area
will give the exact same exp and money so you cannot even choose to
go somewhere that is better for exp or better for money), and their
half-baked "gear" system (enhancements) is the most shallow, poorly
thought out attempt at gear I've ever seen in any game.

It is booming right now due to a lot of external, unconnected market
forces that it is benefiting from "for free." You have tons of very
popular super hero movies tearing up the box office. You have the
recent HUGE hit Freedom Force that revitalized the super hero
genre. You have the fact that since so many super hero games suck,
if you make one that is decent or better, you look great in
comparison.

But, they blew a lot of money on advertising in PC Gamer over the
past year and gave them a lot of exclusive "scoops", so you know the
review can only go so low.

> I might be looking at it rosy but there's a lot of positive ahead
> from where I am standing despite the cancellations.

I take a lot of positive things from the cancellations as well. It
is indicative of a healthy market that the cream rises to the
top. When bad games fail, regardless of multi-billion dollar
publisher support, that is a good thing for people who make GOOD
games.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Hartman, J.D. (http://www.threshold-rpg.com)
President & CEO, Threshold Virtual Environments, Inc.
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