[MUD-Dev] CoH (was: MMORPG Cancellations: The sky is falling?)

[Ghilardi Filippo]

From: Sean Howard

> Their future plans for CoH and the CoV expansion are almost word
> for word what I wrote in a blog before CoH was released, so I
> already know that I agree with the direction they are going. I
> REALLY agree with it. But the point is, they aren't there yet. You
> can't praise a game now for vague ideas of kinda maybe what they
> might do at some unspecified point in the near and/or distant
> future.

Today's MMOG industry rely a lot on being able to sell (and cash) a
vague i= dea of what there will be (hopefully) in the future. In
single player title= s you can tell around how next sequel of Duke
Nukem will be, but all you ge= t is hypes and not cash until it's on
shelves.

> You can buy Diablo II, Morrowind, Divine Divinity, Temple of
> Elemental Evil, Icewind Dale II, Gothic II, and Neverwinter Nights
> for about $10 each, and each providing more interesting and varied
> gameplay that will last you a long time of beating the crap out of
> stuff... for less than the price of the game itself and one month
> of CoH.

Here we go in a little minefield probably...  We are always been
told that there's to pay the box for the game itself and= a monthly
fee for support/updates/maintenance etc.

I don't want to go deep on how money is spent or if is fair 15$
versus 13$ = or whatever. But considering games from a technical
view we could different= iate online games in few categories:

  - Persistent worlds where land can be changed by player
  interaction (eg. U= O, SWG. In some cases is even saved state of
  every single mob so that survi= ves on server reboot.)

  - Persistent worlds that don't save world state exluding few
  things (eg. E= Q, DAOC. Even tought DAOC has hadded housing zones
  so could sit in the prev= ious group)

  - Instanced worlds for many small groups (eg. Diablo)

The first 2 on list are usually played with a monthly fee. But I
would like= to know the real difference between the last 2
categories. What I see is t= hat all is saved is your character
status (also in CoH). The middle is real= ly a gray area.

So, why Diablo can be played free and EQ doesn't?  Also, GuildWars
(www.guildwars.com) promise to not need a monthly fee in it= 's
business model. It will be playable only online, featuring instanced
and= common areas, character evolution and so on. That is really
like most MMOR= PG already on the market.

> For the price of CoH and three months of play, you can purchase
> SWG (at $30), Dark Age of Camelot (at $10), Anarchy Online (at
> $5), Neocron (at $5), PlanetSide (at $8), Everyquest (at $10),
> Shadowbane (at $3), and Horizons (at $13). That's EIGHT free
> months for around $80 on pretty much all the other MMORPGs
> available (except FFXI and Lineage 2).

Sorry, but I don't buy this.  Following you, I would never buy a
game upon release (could be choice). Upo= n release all games had
price higher that drops as time goes as they relay = on acquiring
more players for the monthly fee than charging for the box its=
elf. And this is true for single player games too as you can one
year old g= ames for a fraction of the price of new releases.

> It is pretty well documented by people much smarter and well
> spoken than me that gameplay is at its best when it is a series of
> interesting decisions. CoH practically plays itself.

I totally agree.  I made some study on character development in that
game and found that is a= lmost impossible to make it wrong. As you
level you get new powers from a c= hoice but in the end you will get
almost of them anyway. So basically the b= ig decision is done at
character creation when you decide class and primary= /secondary
skill set. Okey there could be some imbalances on some combinati=
ons but devs can always work on them. Player could think there's
choices in= reality there aren't that many.

ciao ciao
G.Filippo
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