Coming from someone who thinks Tetris would have as much significance if it were released today vs 30 years ago, I can assure you this did not hurt my feelings.

I did not say that, and I don't think that.

P.S. Your feelings and opinions do not concern me.

It's also just about as probable to for an Indy studio to build an MMO (that more than 50 people find worth to regularly spend their time on) as it is probable to win the lottery. I think that's the message people want to convey. (No offense meant.)

It is not difficult to determine the probability of winning a lottery upon buying X number of tickets. On the other hand I would be quite interested to see how you have determined the probability of an Indy studio building an MMO that more than 50 people find worthy to spend their time on regularly. Is it a calculation of the number of such MMOs there have ever been divided by the number of registered Indy studios there have ever been? If that is so I would be very surprised at the answer being of the same order as the probability of winning the lottery given the purchase of 10 tickets for example.(I did no see anything in your post that could be construed as offensive, so no offence taken, and even if I had I would not have taken offence.)

[quote name='Antheus' timestamp='1296412729' post='4767110']
[quote name='Butabee' timestamp='1296380660' post='4766947']
But on the other hand there are successful hobby developed MMOs like Runescape for instance.

Runescape was developed in a different time when expectations were different.

Just like Tetris once took world by storm, it wouldn't go anywhere today, and would just be flooded among literally tens of thousands of more compelling and more polished games. MUDs were once big and by tacking a visual UI on one of them Ultima Online was born. Again, there are hundreds of UO-like online games out there today, running in Flash/browser[/quote]

That's so unbelievable. I haven't got time to read the whole thread or your post but I had to comment on those statements.

Tetris is a classic game (look up the definition of classic if you are not familiar with the term), and if it hadn't been invented, and were released today, it would be a unique game with great gameplay and replayability. With the right advertising it would be a very successful game considering the relatively little investment it would need to develop. Not all games need to have the latest in 3D rendering and illumination techniques to be successful... What you've said is tantamount to saying Chess, Go, Connect Four, Nought and Crosses, or Monopoly, aren't flashy enough to succeed in today's market of board games! They're no doubt some of the most played and best selling board-games in the world. And I bet a hell of a lot people sill play Tetris. I know I did recently. Damn sight more fun than most big titles today that's for sure... In fact I'm going to go play Tetris right now, because its such a great game.
[/quote]

Tetris, monopoly, etc...they caught onto pop culture. If they weren't invented, something else would have came along and taken the spot. So releasing them today would NOT have had the same impact.

It might have had some popularity like bejeweled does, but tetris(as we know it) went down in history books.

[quote name='way2lazy2care' timestamp='1297697991' post='4774118']Coming from someone who thinks Tetris would have as much significance if it were released today vs 30 years ago, I can assure you this did not hurt my feelings.

I did not say that, and I don't think that.

P.S. Your feelings and opinions do not concern me.
[/quote]

That explains why you didn't reply to me...

Blizzard has went on record saying there are 5.5 million lines of code to WoW. No clue how they came to that metric so they might be counting whitespace and comments to inflate the numbers. Either way, that is way out of the realm of possibility for a small indie team.

For frame of reference, the software package my team (of five) created and maintains is roughly 2 million lines of code (including white spaces, so assuming WoW also inflated it's numbers, we're less than half their mass) and it's five years old. Five years of 10+ hours days on average and many late nights and more than a few weekends. So if it's just code we're talking about, and this is a small devoted team of indie devs who also have full-time jobs and perhaps remarkably patient and enduring families...they could make WoW minus the art and music in...

I'll leave conjectures on the amount of time to you. It's prohibitive. That's my guess.

IMHO, MMOs are over. There is WoW, it has completed the genre. There is nothing more to improve, all that can be said has been said, now it's just about pumping content. New pet of the month. A new raid once a year. But the business and gameplay model are complete and done for.

At some point, someone probably suggested that there would never be anything better for writing than the quill pen -- simply because they didn't posses enough critical thinking and vision to see beyond the box.