quote:Original post by Plasmadog I think the original question was not "Why do people play MMPORPGs?", but rather "Why do people setting out to make their first real game choose to make it an MMPORPG?". Which, I think, is a bloody good question. Whatever happened to starting with a simple 2d game and gradually working your way up? Talk about jumping in at the deep end!
yeap this is what my question was.. y do ppl try to run before they can even walk???
I think people who try to run before they can walk, and realize that they are doing this must just think that they are genius programmers who are obviously much smarter than the 1000s of others. It''s not long before they realize this not to be the case though.
The easy one: MONEY. They have the potential to make major amounts of cash. EQ has brought in somewhere around an average of $2.5Million every month. Even if you just look at UO, they averaged $1Million per month so far and you''re not even figuring in the fact that they''re selling the game and expansions. EQ has brought in more money than the entire Sim series combined (somewhere around $75 Million, not including the actual sales of the game and expansions). That alone is enough reason for most people. Can you imagine what kind of game you could make if you had just an eighth of that to work with? $9Million. That''s more than just about any other game out there has ever had for a budget.
The GM one: To have your game world played by thousands upon thousands of people. The only people who have this kind of game world saturation are the Gary Gygax and that group... Norrath is nearly as well known as Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms.
The challenge: You''re not just talking about making some good graphics, decent gameplay, a few models and a networking module... you have to toss in an entire back-end server, build a world the size of some small nations, history, PLUS good graphics, decent gameplay, more models than you ever considered needing for 5 games before. It''s an awesome project and pulling one off successfully would give you the biggest ''in'' to the gaming industry that you could imagine. You''d be the man with the midas touch to most publishers.
The player one: To make the best MMOG and fix all the problems that you see with the previous ones. Tired of running around in a world where nothing changes, or in a ''care bear'' world or a hostile ''PvP nightmare'' world or whatever, you want to fix it so that you can basically play the best game. Nobody else is doing it ''right'', so you might as well.
The programmer: For most non-game industry programmers, this might be the easiest way in. How many game programmers work with network applications and SQL day in and day out? You''ve got those skills and most of them don''t. If they don''t and want to learn them, the only way to do that and stay in the gaming industry is to work on an MMOG.
The designer: Tired of having your in-depth concepts cut to shreds on the back of feature creep and a lack of personnel to put everything in that you wanted? This is your chance to build everything that you ever wanted into a world. You''ll end up with more stuff than you could have ever dreamed in the game and probably end up a half slave to trying to come up with more stuff than you imagined needing.
Reasons? Lots. If you don''t see them then it''s probably because you don''t want to. You think that people should just go out and play PnP games? That''s fine, think that... they won''t, but you can think it all you want. Most people don''t want to set aside time every week to play D&D or whatever, but sitting down for a couple of hours to EQ is easy and doesn''t require any commitment or work (none of your buddies have to be the GM and tied down to working on the adventure, you just get to have the fun).
Can''t afford more than one or two of them? Who are you kidding? I''m spending almost $100/month between my digital cable and the cable modem service. If I can afford that I can surely afford to spend $50/month for other entertainment.
Not enough of a market? There are something on the order of 3-4 Million people playing these games right now and it''s a pretty darn new genre. It''s only going to grow and those who can put one together and build one that will make money will have the money to spend making a better one than someone who doesn''t have that money. Beating Verant is going to be a serious challenge, simply because of the fact that they have the experience. The best chance to beat them is that they lose the competent people who know what they''re doing.
Pick your reasons or find reasons not to make them. I can give you those reasons also, but I don''t like making arguments that I patently disagree with.
quote:Original post by solinear Beating Verant is going to be a serious challenge, simply because of the fact that they have the experience. The best chance to beat them is that they lose the competent people who know what they''re doing.
Actually, I think the best chance to beat them is to provide variations on the theme. MMO should become a distribution/interaction model, allowing for a variety of genres to apply it. We''d see MMO sports games (World Baseball is the first I''ve heard of), MMO action shooters, MMO FPS (kinda like current deathmatch/CTF/etc, but on a much larger scale; imagine an entire war being fought by nations of FPS infantry and gunners and medics and...), MMO RTS and RTT...
As solinear said, the "genre" (and I use that word very loosely; paradigm is much more appropriate) is only going to grow. Heck, given enough time we might find MMO-Puzzle games...
“[The clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man” - Thomas Jefferson
MMO FPS (kinda like current deathmatch/CTF/etc, but on a much larger scale; imagine an entire war being fought by nations of FPS infantry and gunners and medics and...), MMO RTS and RTT...
Kind of like World War II Online, but one hopes the bugs will be squashed.
[edited by - revshannon on April 15, 2002 8:43:48 AM]
Hey, MMO-Puzzle! Imagine having an incredibly large structure to be reassembled, Testrisphear-esque, and you find parts and communicate with your teammates on where the part should go.
T5: I found the green rubicon! T3: G12! G12! T1: Where''s the fscking yellow orb! T2: Yellow orb! Got it! T1: hup! T2: Catch!
That''s an excerpt from a VoIP-enabled team puzzle game in which teams try to assemble various psuedo-sci-fi/fantasy machines in a race against the clock or against other teams. The machinery could them be used to gain strategic advantage in some "larger context."
Man, this rocks! I''ll have to crack out the compiler after class...
quote:Original post by Oluseyi Hey, MMO-Puzzle! Imagine having an incredibly large structure to be reassembled, Testrisphear-esque, and you find parts and communicate with your teammates on where the part should go.
T5: I found the green rubicon! T3: G12! G12! T1: Where''s the fscking yellow orb! T2: Yellow orb! Got it! T1: hup! T2: Catch!
That''s an excerpt from a VoIP-enabled team puzzle game in which teams try to assemble various psuedo-sci-fi/fantasy machines in a race against the clock or against other teams. The machinery could them be used to gain strategic advantage in some "larger context."
Man, this rocks! I''ll have to crack out the compiler after class...
That sounds incredibly cool, in an odd sort of way.
