plaguelands.com2007’s MMOG Doom and Gloom
This was the year that was supposed to bring joy to every mmog player wanting some new digs. Now that the year is wrapping to an end, everywhere I turn that old man triumphantly holding the sign, “the end came again and again, suckers!” flashes his toothless smile and busts a groove. My response is to stand still and quietly cry.
This year marks the end of the line for several highly-profiled mmogs and not your three man development teams based in Romania working on a supposed ‘Triple-A’ mmog funded by goat milk. Those no longer concern me. What does concern me is the struggle higher caliber mmogs now face and this year is proving to be more sour than sweet. Nothing really outstanding has stood out and the speculation that WoW would expand and promote a substantial growth to other mmogs remains a bad hypothesis. Other large budget behemoths were either grounded or are delayed until next year. I’ll take a delay over imminent death, but it still stings for 2007. Let’s take a look back on what the hell happened.
Kaput, Finished, Last Throes:
Auto Assault
It lingered and instead of withering forever it was introduced to the NCsoft garrotter. Not funny-lame enough for you? Fine then, insert your witty crash and burn puns, ran out of gas witticisms, buy a hybrid you stinkin gas guzzler jokes, or you can read my amazing award-losing bid adieu.
Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising
So close to being finished, it was all there man. The manuals and box design in the final design stages and were about to hit the presses and then bam – just like that – Romulus and Remus have been slain by a wolf cub and Rome falls.
Ryzom
There is a campaign to save it. It is nice to know a few readers who commented on my Ryzom is dying post enjoy the game and want to keep playin. Others I conversed with didn’t even know about Ryzom. Closet mmorpgs. Come out, come out wherever you are.
A message to all the small time mmog developers out there: Guess what, you aren’t SOE, you don’t have the lucrative Smedley piñata everyone wants to bash. You gotta work harder, a lot harder for those eyeballs. Try and get writers who post all their rambling about mmogs for fun to play your game and blog about it. Some of us do get more than a few hits (not me!) and are open to reviewing a game. All it takes is an email and a free pass.
Delayed:
This is supposed to be the next best thing since Warcraft drugged everyone and stole their lunch money. Well, I think the hype by Paul Barnett and the expectations raised far beyond their control and the sting is already being felt. Some early nasty nda leaks are making the rounds, as they normally do, but I haven’t read one “I really like this game” leak. I’m trying to avoid the hoopla trash until I get my own hands around someone’s neck and take their beta account.
What I do know about Warhammer and this is stating an obvious shocker: Warhammer’s combat will be more of the same: dealing damage, limiting damage, sustaining damage – woo doggie, that sure doesn’t sound familiar one bit! But with the Warhammer flair. Combat is what it is man, unless you go with a combative diplomacy and slay an opponent with gestures, words, or straight up pelvic thrusting. Will the combat be so glorious that it will trigger the dopamine chemicals swirling inside my brain juices? I hope so. Please, oh please. Make combat fun and intuitive and I won’t care that you call your fireball a fire crotch rocket.
Five long years in development and delayed until early next year. This mmog might end up being polished and the most underrated mmog in 2008. I don’t think it will see more than 50k subscriptions though because players suck. Yes we do, we have our heads so far up our asses and we are a lazy fickle bunch. I’ll prove it. I still haven’t tried this mmog, I missed last weekend’s stress-test beta because I can’t whip down 4 gigs in a day and I didn’t feel the need to only play it for 6 hours before being shown the door until being invited back over. Last I heard, it only had 25k downloads and that doesn’t mean every person played the game. They ended up with more than they needed for the stress test so I hope I’m wrong and they get more than they deserve if the game is good. Five years! It better be good.
Delayed until the end of the month. Oh boy, it’s been six long years since this game was announced and the result is fucking pathetic. I expect a lot more from something that is funded by a major studio for this long and that supposedly has one of the best development teams in the industry who claim their pile of dung is revolutionary. No viva la revolution. You’re on your own there buddy.
Richard Garriot pimp hand is weak now. Garriot didn’t exceed the bar with Tabula Rasa, he fucking ripped it from the Devil’s hands and smashed himself in the head with it over and over and now he wants to run away to Outer space and flee mankind to mate with some space aliens. Will Tabula Rasa do well? It would do better without the monthly fee. Oh, that hurts, but it’s true. Look for the monthly sub to jam the numbers from going up and when Huxley comes out, fugghaaboutit! You just might see NCsoft’s garrotter lay waste to this if it flops.
Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
Delayed until 2008. Player versus player looks alright, bombarding a wooden gate with fire and brimstone and flying projectiles and more flying projectiles. Look, we bypassed the gate, time to mow down the cowards. I’m definitely glad AOC was delayed because it isn’t ready. This is another popular, omg please be good. I literally see people fainting for and clamoring for this mmog. “OMFG, you can decapitate someone? I’m in. I always wanted too be a headless horsemen.”
One minor tangent is whoever runs the beta app need to add the ability to update your dxdiag file because you can’t submit a new one or update your old one. This is a serious problem if you happen to install a little something called new computer hardware! It really, really happens, sometimes you gotta let go – goodbye sweet, sweet geforce 2 card. A little tip for those who plan on applying and haven’t yet. It’s actually better to cheat on your dxdiag stats it just in case you really do score that 8800GTX later down the road.
Belly Flops into the Cesspool:
How fucking dare you, McQuaid. What a waste of twenty to thirty million dollars. The beta and initial release was horrible, ghastly, atrocious, repulsive, sickening – *flips through thesaurus,* bad sums it up in a nutshell. I got battle beta testing scars to prove all of it, I got maniacal disgusting scars from the pits of sweaty naked fat Thestrans making wang shapes in unison during phase 1. My brain is scarred, I got post traumatic diseases; my whole face is just one scabby scar. I’m still picking the scabs off. The genetic freaks who managed to survive the beta by hiding in fall out shelters claim Vanguard is a lot more improved since SOE took over and McQuaid was exiled to the swamp of crazy dev of no return. Stay, boy. Stay! I don’t like torture though so I’m not sure when and if I will be back.
Flying High, low, anywhere but into the Cesspool:
Expansions, when a mmog expands it’s still in business and must be taken into account. Normally expansions are scoffed at by the pundits who do these types of lists *cough, ahem* even if they do add innovative features like more bag space for even more quest pieces and tradeskill items. Sweet, about time I got that space.
Huh. I don’t play it. Here’s a good list of links if you are interested in playing from someone who does. What I can say is even though Guild Wars needs to make money from the box sales, they flubbed on the accessibility to purchase an all-in-one box after each additional expansion launched and instead had shit like collectors editions + the original game for the price of one. It’s Limited, limited, limited boxes for a limited time! It’s limited people! Buy them all separately until now. Bleh. Hey, make it easier. I buy the latest expansion and I get all the remaining games I missed out on or you at least offer a separate box with a higher price that offers ALL Guildwars ALL the damn time if you don’t want to let it go on the cheap.
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade
Oh, look! Ten more levels; new races; new low level content that we can finish in less than 24 hours played that took Blizzard a year to develop. Not bad, not bad. What’s this at the end? Holy cluster fucking shit nards on a stick man. The raid game more or less destroyed at the onset and tore up thousands of guilds. Good thinking! So much for being Mr. Perfect Designers. It amazes me that the lead designers (TIGOLE AND FUROR AND PARDO – no idea if Metzen played EQ or not) made the same mistakes they railed against when they banged their heads against raid content in EverQuest. Still, no matter their mistakes Blizzard could release Vanguard as the next WoW expansion and it’d sell like hot cakes. “Look everybody, Bags of Blizzard’s shit! YES! This is the best tasting poop in a bag ever!”
The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar
Rumored to have 300k subs, this seems like a right number since server farms aren’t rapidly deploying. I thought they would at least have 400k+ by now, but I was a bit too fair and optimistic for this title. The game itself is just meh for me. It’s the classes and combat that do nothing for me. IT’S FUCKING BORING! Ah, glad I got that out - dry heaving man, nasty It really isn’t that great, the content isn’t bad at all, but the classes and the combat. Oh, what else is going on at the industrious Turbine. Yep, out with the prez sprocket, Jeff Anderson and in with another guy. Sheesh, like no one would notice that.
The, Huh, What is it Mmog:
Delayed, but is it even fair to put it on the delayed list with the rest. I applied for the beta a few months back but still no invite, but I’m not sweating it. Come on man, this is niche and small fries. It looks small fries like Mourning. Do you want to play Spellborn? Tell me why in the comments.
Dungeon Runners
Do we count it? Not sure how it’s doing, but with the tag line: “Slay the monsters and be the hero,” I’m sure it’s performing fantastically. When they divulged their statistics on beta retention it was an eye-opener and like whoa, they’re screwed. The numbers proved a drastic result of about one in a thousand, well it wasn’t that bad, it was bad though, an ungodly amount of players didn’t log back in after logging in the first time. Not very sticky at all.
If I forgot anything or you want to add your own comments about any mmog by all means, I’d love to hear from you. Yep, I just said the l word, deal.
About this entry
You’re currently reading “2007’s MMOG Doom and Gloom,” an entry on Plaguelands
- Published:
- 10.10.07 / 10pm
- Category:
- MMOG 2007
I would include the potential sleeper pseudo-MMO of the year - Hellgate: London.
What about The, Oh I Forgot About That Game, Games? Right now DAoC classic servers are filled with fun. You can reach max level before the free trial is up, you can pvp all the way to 50, for some reason there are so many people playing at all times. I strongly recommend giving DAoC another, or a, chance. It still is a strong game (without artifacts and master levels).
Ah, if it isn’t my evil nemesis Bonedead. You know what, I’m Bonealive, so there! That’s interesting, how long does it take reach 50. How many hours would you say?
Well for some odd reason I can’t get on my 50 to see my played time, but my 39 has 1 day and a couple hours and a 22 I have is 16 hours. I’m guessing it’s anywhere from 2-4 days played, leaning more towards 2-3.
A few reasons why I’m looking forward to TCOS.
They are creating a world filled with enough back story that appeals to me. Nothing to this day comes close to be as fleshed out of a world as Battletech, but since they are desiging quests so that people from different factions have differeing quest objectives (even though they are essentially on the same questline) makes me believe I’ll get a decent sense of nuanced multiple perspective influenced storytelling that I liked from btech that isn’t emulated that well in games.
They are implementing a combat system that on paper looks great. I’ve enjoyed a variety of fps games since my introduction with quake3d and Goldeneye64. But all of the shooters I’ve played have been about guns, bombs and sentry stations. The few magic oriented fps games out there I never played so Spellborn will be a refreshing take on standard fps game mechanics.
The ambient audio is very impressive. Their visual art direction is noteworthy as well (though I have some gripes about their thinner avatars which look like bugs from certain angles) but the music so far is exceptional. I always look forward to games that can draw you into the mood and a playstyle rythem with just its music and the released samples of Jesper Kyd’s work for TCOS is definitely the type of music I consider to be good for gaming.
Not only is the music great, their usage of sounds to match different locations is top notch detail I can appreciate. MMORPG.com has a preview section that goes into detail how much effort they put into sound. I should note I’m not the type of person who prefers to play other music in the background. I want good sound experiences from my games.
You can change the world physically. Being first in MMOs or most games don’t matter much to me unless they are fps/racing games. I usually just want a good competitive match. I have tendencies to explore the game worlds I play in on single player RPGs and now I get to test my skills as an explorer against other people who will want to uncover clues to complete quest objectives first. Considering they have a reward system in place for completing world objectives first, I’m confident there will be a decent number of quests that are one shot deals. There sure as hell will be more of those quests than what Blizzard offered with An Quiraj (sp!).
The team presents themselves well. When you ask them the right questions (which most journalists don’t do) they are willing to reveal quite a bit of info about their goals and philosophy. When they make mistakes or are faced with controversy they can deal with them properly. I think they’ve handled themselves professionally and this perception makes me believe they are working towards making a solid well crafted game. The only misgivings I’ve had as of late is their intentions for their biggest pvp content.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comments. I learned a few things about the game I didn’t previously know about.
Alright I got onto my main and he has 5 days played with 110K realm points and champion level 3 and a half. On a side note my level 40 is a better class than my 50, and I went from 39-41 in a matter of 3 hours, solo. The ride to 50 is enjoyable, though at 50 it can slow if you don’t PvE for some gear. In group RvR though, you probably won’t be needing a perfect template of gear, groups have that affect.
That’s not bad at all, is that special server or something, for all the servers? What’s a good server to play on?