Jesus you better not be comparing actual RPGs like Planescape or Fallout to everquestOriginally Posted by SlyMaelstrom
plan on backing that up at all or can i just ignore that entire paragraph
Jesus you better not be comparing actual RPGs like Planescape or Fallout to everquest
plan on backing that up at all or can i just ignore that entire paragraph
Last edited by SniperSAS; 06-20-2006 at 08:41 PM.
It is starting unfortunately. And Blizzard has been doing that since Diablo II. The bit about paying is just now starting. But with Diablo II they started providing since day 1 service packs which reflect mostly the online gammers community wishes and balance concerns, skewing the single-player version in the process. Considering this online community is just a tiny margin of the total universe of Diablo II players (that is, most are single players enjoying the game offline), the logic of this move eludeed me for some time until WoW arrived. Then it became clear.I hope you are right, I am just afraid that once game developers realize they can charge idiots a monthly fee to play a worse version of the games they had before they are going to start doing that instead of making good games for the normal people
What I find fascinating, and somewhat scary, is that people actually are starting considering paying more than $50 to play a game. WoW and a few others are starting to instill the notion that "you have to pay to keep playing". Just as we heard from our friend over there, he accepts that naturally. That is scary... $300 at the end of the year in one game, instead of the usual $50 and yet nothing new is being provided that gamming companies didn't provide before for free.
That is a lot of money. And as you say, game developing companies are probably just realizing the potential and will soon tap into it.
Last edited by Mario F.; 06-20-2006 at 08:45 PM.
Originally Posted by brewbuck:
Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.
No, I would never. Singleplayer and multiplayer games are completely different and have their own advantages and disadvantages. I had amazing fun with Planescape Torment, Fallout 1 and 2, Icewind Dale, both Baldur's Gates, the first, second, and each time through after that. But if you add up the hours I spent on all that, it wasn't close to the hours I played EQ. And the gameplay in EQ always changed with each expansion pack.
I can't say singleplayer or online is better or worse. They're just different.
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We are talking about MMORPGs here not just single player and multiplayer modes in games
They have the same idealistic goals about MMORPGs. Things that will never happen because the developers won't pay enough attention to the game. They won't update enough, they're get the same old bugs, and servers will go down constantly. The same thing that happens with all free RPGs. It's the reason capitalism works... income makes people work harder and do more. That's why people put more trust into paying games like EQ and WoW.
Just like single and multiplayer games, you really can't compare billed and free games. They have different lifespans. Guild Wars could be great game. It's beautiful and from what I hear the gameplay is fun, but they're in a whole because they don't have income from their members. The more people play, the laggier the servers get... etc. And they can't start charging now because that will send their fan base away.
Ummm... we were talking about MMORPGs until you brought Planescape and Fallout out of left field.
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No online game will ever beat the hours I spent playing Baldur's Gate or Doom. And the level of enjoyment I had is yet to be matched. (well, not entirely true... Jet Set Willy on Spectrum is number one).
The type of enjoyment I received from online games is mostly resumed to having to put up with a lot of jerks and narrow-minded brats who enjoy ruining your fun in benefit of their own fun, stuckup admins/coders/gods/whatevers with delusions of grandeur. Some enjoyment is also possible, of course. A few individuals do know how to behave and "play the game" and there is always the fact that the game itself was meant to be fun (very few games fail on design). But at the end of the day I would have a false notion of enjoyment that I quickly recognized and made me stop playing those kind of games. And I wasn't even paying.
Originally Posted by brewbuck:
Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.
don't forget that that the more people play, the more money they are making from selling their game rather then screwing over thier existing fan base
it's pretty strange that I have yet to find an instance where the guild wars servers had lines, like WoW, failed, or had terrible lag although maybe i am just doing bad research
only because you are referring to MMORPGs as RPGs, how do you expect me to know what you are talking about?
Last edited by SniperSAS; 06-20-2006 at 08:58 PM.
Why would I all of the sudden go and change the subject to single player games? The whole comparison was clearly geared to comparing free MMORPGs or subscriber RPGs. I stopped feeling like pressing 'M''M''O' for a while because at that point, I felt it was understood. Would you prefer I just completely spell out "Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games?"
Anyway, Guild Wars just hit 2 million subscribers, while WoW (as I hear) is running over 6 million, now. When guild wars starts running out of fumes due to lack of funds, WoW will still be trucking. Just look at history. There hasn't been a free MMORPG that came even close to the success of Everquest. Nor has there been an online game with the launch that World of Warcraft has, which by the way, beyond that launch hasn't had any more complaints about lag than Guild Wars. If Guild Wars goes two more years with a large fanbase, I'd be surprised.
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weird because you started typing MMORPG again right after you said RPG
whatever it takes to keep you from randomly changing the subject, or you could stop acting childish and just admit you made a simple typo, i was insulting you aobut it it was just a misunderstanding
I would imagine if money ever gets tight they will release an expansion pack, that way they will be earning money rather then screwing customers out of it
A typo would imply that either I went to type MMO and... I guess missed the keys completely or it would imply that I don't understand the difference between an MMORPG and an RPG. That may be potentially more ridiculous than me missing the keys, so whatever you wish to believe is fine.weird because you started typing MMORPG again right after you said RPG
whatever it takes to keep you from randomly changing the subject, or you could stop acting childish and just admit you made a simple typo, i was insulting you aobut it it was just a misunderstanding
With what money are they going to release this expansion pack? All the money that is earned from the expansion is going to go into the development of it. Eventually, they'll have so little extra money for the servers, they'll have to start releasing quick lame expansions with very few changes. It's like The Sims only more Massively Multiplayer. Guild Wars isn't the first game to try this "free" online game bit. It's been tried and it's failed. The costs are just too great to maintain the game without subscription. This by the way is exactly how this conversation started. You proclaiming that games could be free and subscriptions were just "stealing" the subscribers money.
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this was a pretty intelligent thing to say
obviously, you are an expert at game development finances, and can apparently predict the future so I am not even going to spend time responding to this logical, and well structured point
What games are you talking about now?
Look man, when the person paid 50 dollars or more for a game, he should have the right to play it whenever he wanted. The idea of monthly fees to play a game you already paid for is ridiculous. If game developers can't afford to support their game after customers buy it then the whole idea of MMO gameplay is flawed. It's strange, other more well designed games with both single player and multiplayer gameplay have good support from the developers, and I can play them for free whenever I want, granted I paid for it at the store.
Guild Wars doesn't manage to provide the exact same service as
WoW. The games are completely different.
Since the WoW's release, there have been something like 6 new
dungeons added (Maraudon, Dire Maul, Blackwing Lair, Zul'Gurub,
Ahn'Qiraj, and today Naxxramas). Not only that, but a huge PvP
system was incorporated with 3 differenet battlegrounds - Arathi
Basin (capture and hold), Warsong Guch (capture the flag), and
Alterac Valley (40 vs 40).
Either one of these patches could have been probably been sold
as an expansion, but Blizzard released them as additional content.
That's where a lot of the $15/month goes.
And every company profits at the expense of their customers.
Who else would they profit off of? God, what a retarded
statement.
You're not understanding the difference between the two games.it's pretty strange that I have yet to find an instance where the guild wars servers had lines, like WoW, failed, or had terrible lag although maybe i am just doing bad research
Staying away from General.
You're still ignoring the fact that you're paying for a service. A service that free games can't provide.
A free RPG may be able to afford the servers and the occasional expansion, but they'll never be able to afford good ingame support, regular patches for bug fixes, or the amount of traffic that WoW gets. And if they try to do that, then their net will surely dip into the red until they're either flat broke or they have to charge a subscription fee. You don't have to be a financial expert to do the math on this.
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Snipe is just jealous because he can't afford the $15 dollars a month.
M.Eng Computer Engineering CandidateB.Sc Computer Science
Robotics and graphics enthusiast.
SniperSAS I take it you've never been involved in a guild (or whatever X game calls it) having over 50 people that did raids on a regular basis. When you are involved in the leadership of it you do gain real leadership skills. You have to take into account people's availablity, their personalities, their skills, and their goals and desires.
Its very social when you have to make a plan of attack, effectively communicate that plan, coordinate the peope involved, execute that plan. Then if you fail you have to keep people's moral up while you evalute what went wrong, see if you can reattempt it then, deal with people going AFK during the recovery, etc. If you succeed then you have an almost bigger challenge in dividing up the rewards, sometimes convenicening others to allow someone else to get something for the good of the group.
All that above IS social behavior.
