MMOFringe Opinions

http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/5910/Why-a-Horror-MMO-Wont-Work.html

I very strongly disagree with the article, and it is clear that the mistake is in assuming that a horror MMO must just be a re-skinned WoW-clone.

No. A survival horror MMORPG must PLAY very differently from the typical theme park gear grind.

1 - You must FEAR death. Whether the penalty is permadeath or simply a day of being unable to play that character, death must be something to FEAR. Without that, there is no horror and survival is meaningless.

2 - monsters must be threats to be avoided or removed, not resources to be 'farmed'. This is where a lot of zombie games fall down. If you are hunting them, it isn't survival horror. If THEY are hunting YOU, then it IS.

3 - The goal is TO SURVIVE. The attacks become more and more numerous and powerful, and eventually, your safe place is overrun. Your ePeen is based on how long you and your community survived.

Feel free to add more suggestions.

Due to a concurrent local SF convention, I was only able to play a few hours of the recent weekend beta. About four hours of which were as a Jedi Knight. Here are a few points which made an impression in that limited time.

1 - The UI text is too small for me to read without squinting and leaning towards the screen. There is NO UI slider to adjust text size, despite such being a standard for recent MMOs. . As of yet (Nov 21st) , there apparently has been no fix put in. This alone is a deal-breaker for me.

2 - It felt very wrong to me to be looting corpses and attacking non-hostile mobs as a Jedi. As did needing to PAY for my Padawan training. I chose not to loot  corpses, and was unable to purchase my skills as they became available.

3 - The combination of three combat skills (force leap, some multi-swing flurry attack, and an AOE attack) made melee enjoyable and fun - with a decent TTK. While it felt good against NPCs, I have to wonder if the flurry attack will feel right in PvP.

4 - Personal energy shields? REALLY? The same BS Star Trek Online used to prolong combat feels even less true to the IP here.

There has been many a lament on the Fringe about the lack of a Steampunk MMO. I would have to agree as it would seem that the majority of MMOs nowdays are Fantasy in the vein of Tolkein and Dungeons & Dragons settings. There is just something about steampunk that offers fantasy in a somewhat "fresher" take. Sure, there is magic but there are also Airships which are nods to the long forgotten Zeppelins. There are fantastical firearms and wonderous devices that swirl HG Wells in with the Dwarves and Elves.

No game captured this genre better than Arcanum. It was released in 2001 on 2 cds and with some fanfare which was stolen True there were bugs but those were patched and worked around. And none of it detered the thrill you got from playing in such an engrossing setting. Character advancement really was one of the reasons to keep playing as the development of your character pulled you further into the steampunk world.

Now I know this a lot of late night rambling but I have a really fond memory to share with you about this game. At one point, you enter this town and are warned numerous times about this foul beast that lives in the caves just out of town. EVERYONE is afraid of it and the tales of its vile deeds have you stocking up on your health items and armor because you know sure as shit that you are going to have to go kick its ass.

So after much stocking, I head out to the caves and see all the bones. I triple check my saves and head into the cave. And there it was - the most foul creature I had ever laid eyes on. It had big pointy teeth and a mean streak a mile wide... I mean LOOK AT THE BONES!!! I won't give it away anymore but lets just say I laughed pretty damn hard until the first volley of attacks had me near death. Many Save Restores later, I finally beat the son of a bitch.

Anywho, if you have a hankering for some steampunk - gog.com has it for download at a mere $5.99. DRM free. It runs even on Windows 7. And better still, the community added some custom patches back in 2009 for widescreen resolutions and some other nifty details. Links provided below...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcanum:_Of_Steamworks_and_Magick_Obscura

For Sale at...
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/arcanum_of_steamworks_and_magick_obscura

Patches, Mods and Errata
http://www.terra-arcanum.com/downloads/

I am a relative newcomer to MMORPGs. I started in WoW back in 2005 and it was my first MMO.

I am not a newcomer to gaming overall, however. I began playing board games with my parents around 5 or 6. Sorry, Clue, Monopoly (blech), Aggravation, and a game which was hugely popular in school for a while - World Wide.

I progressed to a big favourite of mine - Admirals (think of a naval version of Stratego) and Risk.

In the mid '70s my mother insightfully bought me Panzer Leader. MY first serious wargame. I was hooked. Wargames became my prime gaming interest. Had several Avalon Hill games as favourites - Air Force (the Battleline original, though), and Flat Top in particular.

Other than soccer, I wasn't very interested in sports (watching or playing) until 1979. Watched the Super Bowl that year (and became a Cowboys fan) and a local radio station started carrying the Montreal Expos games which my whole family followed loyally.

Very soon after that, I discovered AH's Statis-Pro Baseball. I was quickly addicted and played hundreds of games solitaire comprising several different seasons. I got a few friends hooked as well, and we played hundreds more games in various seasons with 3-6 managers using players from 4 or 5 years of cards.

It was the most intense gaming period of my life. Great excitement, creativity (we (mostly I) invented several additiional rules systems to add to our seasons' complexity and fun), and arguments. OH - the arguments! Friendly ones about strategy and very UNfriendly ones about rules.

Wow - what memories.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statis_Pro_Baseball

"This line really reminded me of a profound truth that I have grown fond of recently, that for anything you do not pay for you are the product, not the client. Basically all the free players are there so they can get pwned by freemium players, what a joke!

Since the quality of these games is dubious and falling daily, my conclusion is at some point in the future all free players will begin to actually be paid token sums of money so that there are always a steady supply online ready to get bum raped by freemium players, it will probably be cheaper than designing bot ai."

Wow. This might actually happen.

You know what the problem with MMO Industry is? They make shit. Unbelievable, unremarkable shit. Now I'm not some grungy wannabe fanboi that's searching for escapism through a haze of bong smoke or something. No, it's easy to pick apart bad coding, short-sighted development, and a purely moronic stringing together of words that many of the studios term as "voice acting". No, I'm talking about the lack of immersion. Immersion; not a pervasive element in today's modern American game development vision. Take The Old Republic, for example. Arguably Bioware's best work, short of Mass Effect and KoTOR Part 1, of course. Masterpiece of beta testing, easily Bioware's best. The cinematography, the graphics, the storyline, all top-notch. But... they didn't push the envelope.

Now what if in deep space, the smuggler REALLY wanted to pilot the ship? What if - now this is the tricky part - what if he started jump to lightspeed right away? No mercy, no quarter. "Get out of my way or the Whaladon-class container ship gets it side full speed." Bam, crash! What, still no player created chaos? Come on! How many transport freighters splattered across a galaxy would it take to have the Republic reverse its policy on smuggling situations? And this is 5000 BBY; there's no Vader, there's no Palpatine, there's no... there's no Empire! Now fast forward to A New Hope, time of the rebellion, same situation. How quickly would the Galactic Empire make a frenzy over this? In a matter of hours, it'd be biggest story from Hutta to Corelia! Ten Kessel Runs, twenty, thirty; relentless, bam bam, one right after another, all caught in high-def, computer-enhanced, holovid recorded. You can practically taste the glitterstim spice. All for what? More devs, delayed launch? A couple of million dollars more so success would be assured?

I don't think so. Just a thought. I mean, it's not within the realm of conventional gaming... but what if?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG-Z6-nFQBo

i now admit my earlier prediction that this game wouldn't last 6 months is wrong. why? one thing. it isn't the vast amounts of beta testers. or the preorders being cancelled due to lack of boxes. in this instance a game i used to hate and vilify is a better judge of the viability of this game and the industry as a whole. WOW. the fact that WOW lost a considerable amount of subs when TOR hit beta says more for the possible future of the game than anything else.

                                      looks like i have to admit that after all the crappy games claiming to be the one that could dethrone WOW...this WOW clone is the first one that actually stands a shot at doing it.  and make no mistake about it. TOR IS a WOW clone. if you strip it down to its basic components its just another thin and shallow themepark game. its chances for success have nothing to do with polish,voice overs,quest choices, or any of the other highly touted features. none of these can carry a game. they're just icing on the cake. its all about the star wars experience. those of you who defend the shallow "safe" themepark design that bioware have chosen really need to stop beating us non believers over the head with "but its got story!" "and quest choices!" because we both know that the real reason you love the game so much is its star wars...period. and hey there's nothing wrong with that. we recently saw the article about the different reasons why TOR could fail. i actually came to the game's defense cause those were the stupidest reasons ever.

                                                   the only reason this game stands a good chance of failing is the same reason all the other WOW clones failed. a design philosophy deeply rooted in the idea of stealing another game's playerbase. that said its actually the first game that has blizzard sweating. the only other game that had a chance to dethrone WOW was lotro. and it was a sight the day that open beta ended and the majority of the players abandoned the game to go back to WOW. i guess when open beta for TOR ends we'll see if they stick around. anyway enough meandering. my modified predictions:

3-4 months post launch: EAware will trumpet success at stealing a million players from WOW. but it wont be enough to satisfy EA's legion of doom management. or pay back the 200 million investment. the fist signs of boredom will start to show on the forums. if EA lets them post and not ban them.

6-8 months post launch: still not happy with a actual success EA will push out a lifetime sub. the subs will start to shrink as the star wars euphoria wears off and people start to realize they are just playing WOW in space. at the same time blizzard will get back many players by announcing a expansion.

1 year post launch: with the WOW expansion along with boredom taking a hit on subs they will then stab the lifetimers in the back by going FTP+RMT. doesnt matter though. anyone who buys a lifetime sub in a game that depends on regular income to support constant content updates gets what they deserve.

well only time will tell if im close to right. flame on!

The devs suck. They can't come up with a decent engine that can't be hacked seven ways to Sunday. They can't fix a bug without installing three others, and that bug will likely come back later. They can't see past the dollar signs in their eyes to make a great game. They whore themselves out to stupid and selfish players - because that is the lowest common denominator.

The players suck. They are gutless and brainless in PvP. Content to grind loser rewards rather than make an effort to win - because it's more efficient (TY for that devs) and they can't deal with their hurt feelings. They expect anyone who joins a dungeon group to already have the gear that drops there AND know the fights (like they were BORN knowing them and never had to learn). They take pride only in their wardrobe and RMT purchases, and not in playing WELL.

The companies suck. They release MMOs designed by the marketing department that serve only to suck money from stupid children.

Fuck the lot of you. I had a few good (even great) times my first few years playing MMOs, but it's all shit now.

STWOR - it's KOTOR online, not a Star Wars MMORPG. Fuck that.

GW2 - some cute ideas in combat, but NO MOUNTS? Bullshit. "We've eliminated the holy trilogy". Bullshit. Wait and see. "We'll add RMT if the players want them". Bullshit. PLAYERS don't ask to pay for content that used to come at NAC. Company shills make those posts.

TSW - wow, this one hurts. A modern day horror MMORPG sounds very cool. Sort of like X-Files the MMO. But - a sub fee + cash shop? GREED, pure and simple. Fuck you fanboys before you hand out the "yeah, but..." excuses for this shit.

This industry is a sewer - populated by rats.

Stargate SG-1

Zombie Movies

Red Dwarf

Black Adder

X-Files

Science Fiction

Groo the Wanderer

Board games

Skippy smooth peanut butter

Blueberry ice cream

Poached salmon

Rice

Chicken (BBQ or fried)

Cheeseburgers

Hot dogs

Trivia

People telling me I am right

Riding motorcycles

Minecraft

Terraria

Vagrant Story

FF Tactics (not the GBA version)

Lemmings

The PS1 console

Commodore 64

Amiga

Superhero movies

Pizza (all meat)

It has been an amazing ride this year starting off with DCUO's legendary launch, then our appearance at Pax, followed by the amazing growth of our site, Suske's article being featured on World of Tanks and the list goes on. Really, over three years ago, I would have never suspected that the little phpnuke forum would have gotten THIS far. Its been fantastic to watch.

But you want to know what I, kefkah really have cherished this year? The healing of wounds in the hearts of the PreCU vets here. Last year, it was still a war. Forum fights abroad with us rallying around one another in the trenches - we fought hard to get the word out. All the while though, our hearts were wounded. Bleeding in a way from the loss of our "other selves". We were told to "get over it" and move on. And in 2011, we did.

The most active area of this site last year was the SWG forum. Nary a day passed by without a post in that section or an SWG mention in the shoutbox. Now we go days, sometimes weeks without using the word. The SWG section is accessed literally only by people on the outside looking for data.

And how did we move on? Because in 2011, we got a couple of things. First off, we got closure. The final result of the NGE travesty came down like a whisper. Closure. The PreCU people? Acknowledgement, a smirk and perhaps a few moments of celebration. Then nothing. In little more than a day, we moved on.

The second thing that helped for some here and abroad was findind another home for our electronic selves. For some, they found TOR. Not the same game or mechanics. But the same setting. And a place to regroup with comrades of old. Guilds reformed and emails went out breaking years of silence. It was as though I were watching a time lapse of a laceration knit itself back together. A faded scar where once there was bleeding.

And for those who didn't adapt to TOR - there came the promise of other homes. And that is where I, kefkah sit. In my ranger camp at the Fringe, watching the guest pass by, saying hi, tracking news and counting the sunsets. Marking each as to tell me just how close it is until the season for which my own wounds will finally heal. These, despite some dark omens, are good times. Better than the hard winter we've been through in the last few years.

I wanted to give each member of the Fringe a chance to carve out their own little section of the site. A place where their points and thoughts might survive against the tide of posts that appear in the forums. Hence, you are looking at my attempt of a solution. A blogging system that you can name, modify and populate with your ideas.

It isn't perfect but it is a start. I hope that you guys can find a way to make it your home if it is something that appeals to you personally. If not, then enjoy reading what does get posted.

kef