How do these ****ing clueless people end up being in charge of developing games like those? i expect more from indie devs let alone games that i consider to be above ''Triple A''
THE **** MAN, THE ****
Spend 200 millions on creating a game and they can't allow some of that money to research how people behave in similar MMOs? i'm seriously at a loss of words and it's something i've been noticing more and more lately, i don't get it...i just don't
3-5 months to consume "170-180h of content"? Just wow...
Do you really need to do research to understand things like that? Everyone who has been gaming for a long time, played mmos, knows people who plays mmos and have an okay "understanding" of the gamingworld should be able to understand stuff like that.
That is not a missunderstanding. That is a complete utter failure. Would a misstake on that level been made on a non video game company, the could have been fired. Even if you just play 2h a day for 90 days, you will "consume" 180h of content...
I did about 200 hours or so of GW2 in about 2 months or so. Most of it was the first month. These people don't ****ing get it. Seriously, they should do AMA on Reddit to gauge what they should really do. It would be one of the fastest forms of giving feed back on what players want and how long it will last and so on.
180 hours in 3-4 months doesn't sound too unreasonable when it comes to adults. I probably only play... 16-20 hours a week, and I feel like I play a lot of video games. So if you're a single player developer and you think 180 hours of content, you probably do think it's a 3 month thing. But people don't play MMOs like they do normal games. The sit downs are way longer, and they are more steady. I've played four hours of BioShock in three sittings across five days. I played four hours of SWTOR the first four hours I was home from work.
I think I got to 50 in SWTOR in maybe five weeks or so? I wouldn't exchange that for them making it grindier to make it last months. I was happy to pay 60 for the game and 15 for the extra month. I had a blasty, but then I did everything I wanted to, I got to a rewarding skill level with the game, and I didn't have to do any more. Considering how I burned out on Guild Wars and the Secret World in the span of a week each, probably the last MMO I ever play.
Online multiplayer has been around since the mid 90s. The gaming industry was killed by hugely successful games like COD and WoW. Now all companies care about is trying to make clones of those games rather than making something unique. Of course online gaming does have an impact since every game these days has to have some sort of online component, but a game can have an online component and still have a great SP mode.
Lol, I somewhat agree, buy instead of lumping all MMO's together, lets just list WoW.
SWTOR was on the right track with adding large amounts of story and quest driven single player/small group play that could last a very long time. Some where down the line though the developers and producers decided to make the game a 99.9% WoW clone and thought feeding off that games success was a good idea. And guess what, it bombed, horribly.
120 hours in a week. Only MMO's and Call of Duty. Seriously, I play games like 15-25 hours per week and I feel like I play a lot. How the **** do people put in 120 hours?
120 hours in a week. Only MMO's and Call of Duty. Seriously, I play games like 15-25 hours per week and I feel like I play a lot. How the **** do people put in 120 hours?
Either unemployed/not in school, vacation from work/school, or they have a job that allows them to set their own hours.
120 hours in a week. Only MMO's and Call of Duty. Seriously, I play games like 15-25 hours per week and I feel like I play a lot. How the **** do people put in 120 hours?
Unemployment. If there is one thing I have learned playing MMOs, that a lot of the hardcore MMO players are just permanently unemployed.
Preorder battlefield 4 and get credits towards the Premium Expansion pack!!!
Expansion packs.
Being sold even before the base game is out.
**** me.
This is one of my biggest pet peeves and I honestly have avoided DLC for years. I hate that they are developing content for a game with the intention of selling said content post-launch at the cost of the consumer. It is just status quo at this point.
MMO is a tricky genre. Pinpointing the true origin of the genre can lead to some debate but in my opinion it breaks down like this:
1. EverQuest is the pipe dream of Smed. He puts together a team of people who are passionate about the idea and release the product with a relatively untested model (ie. the subscription model we all know and hate today). The game is far more successful that anticipated and they smashed their cost vs profit margins.
2. Blizzard takes notice and never thought of the idea of selling someone a game, selling them expansions down the line AND charging them a monthly fee. Blizzard is intrigued and puts together a game based heavily off of EverQuest (which member of blizzard have admitted EQ was a large influence on WoW). Blizzard is an already established and popular game development company and uses the already established Warcraft IP. The game is successful and improves on some aspects of EQ. As far as I can tell they got a bit lucky. Gaming became more mainsteam than it was before and WoW became way more mainsteam than anyone expected and they end up with millions and millions of subscribers (which is 15x more millions of dollars).
3. Other companies say, "hot damn, I want me some of them monies." Other companies try to mimic WoW because they have been the most successful and investors want the best opportunity to make their money back, and more importantly make profits.
This has lead to a generically stale genre for the most part and who knows when it is going to change. A lot were hoping for GW2 which unfortunately feels more like an action-adventure game than a MMO. Will FF XIV: ARR deliver on expectations? Who knows. Will the barely mentioned, EverQuest Next truly bring a AAA sandbox MMO? The genre needs to change for the better and it will be interesting to see who does it. Based on past history, my money will be on the next Blizzard MMO to be the new breakaway leader in the genre since they already have the biggest market share and will likely migrate players to it.
In a way, the video gaming industry right now reminds of the video game industry of the 80's before the crash: a lot of copy-cats, stagnation, etc.
Not saying that's gonna happen, but something revolutionary would be nice...
That has to be ******** so many people did it in less than a week in the BETA and if online multiplayer killed the "industry" I'm glad its dying because I had a lot of fun with UO/SC/D2.
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I was born mobile.
Last edited by Barry Dylan: 03-30-2013 at 07:47 PM.
Unemployment. If there is one thing I have learned playing MMOs, that a lot of the hardcore MMO players are just permanently unemployed.
There are also small teams of players who play on the same account in rotation.
For example, one guy plays for eight hours, then another takes over for the next eight hours and the third takes over for the next eight hours. Repeat.
There are also small teams of players who play on the same account in rotation.
For example, one guy plays for eight hours, then another takes over for the next eight hours and the third takes over for the next eight hours. Repeat.
It can be two players, three players or more.
It also works for people who actually have a job.
Good point. I was a content developer for Project 1999 (An EQ Emulator Server) and there was two roommates who did that. They leveled a shaman 1-50 in less than two weeks and it took the rest of the community another 2-3 weeks more than that to have the second person hit the level cap. One worked a day shift, the other worked night shifts, so they just did 12-hr shifts and had their character leveling 24 hours a day.
Wow that post really is the truth. Even now that 1993 picture brings back memories of my first time playing Doom. I hadn't thought about that game in at least ten years.
