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"Next-Gen" MMORPGs... will they ever get here?
Raek
Member Posts: 60
Age of Conan, Darkfall, Warhammer Online, Huxley, and the other 10 or so. Which ones will make it and which ones wont? Which ones are closest to release and which ones are the furthest? How many of the games claiming this so called "next-gen" thing are the real deal? And what games are all of you looking forward to? And why.
Comments
I think that the closest release is Pirates of the Burning seas and I believe that this one will start off strong and gently grow stronger as we move through the years. FL makes me think of CCP and that's a good sign in my opinion. You do not need the biggest player base to be the best game. It's not because Star Wars sold more than Dune that it makes it a better overall book or movie.
Huxley seems to have good graphics but then again, does it have the content and world to make it a good game. I think it has potential but it seems very linear. I kinda class Tabula Rasa in the same boat for now until I know more about these two games. However, I really do want to try them out and see for myself. I believe that both will come out and vanish a bit like Planetside. A brilliant start and a slow death. I do think that these are the real third gen or fourth...
I like to think that the third gen is the dark ages of MMOs. (not the game but the era)
It's where everyone tried to pull it off and made tons of promises but in the end, they never really delivered anything good. Vanguard is the best example at the moment.
Now the fourth gen is where games like Pirates, Huxley, Tabula Rasa, Stargate Online, Star Trek online have seen the mistakes and might try to get it right.
In my opinion, i'm looking forward to the upcomming Sci Fi mmos. Stargate has solid books, solid movies and seriously, a pretty good serie if you do get swooped into them of course! With that much storyline and events, the game has potential to provide a very solid and rich world for the players.
Pirates of the Burning seas is really the one that makes me drool. The game seems to offer something completely different to the current market. It's the next step from where EVE left. By saying that, I know that it's not going to become the next WOW in terms of player base but I think that this game will have one of the most evolved community in the next few years.
I'd compare the "second" and "third" generation MMO's out and on the horizon to Gameboy Color games compared to original Gameboy games. Wow. They added color. Woo.
"By the data to date, there is only one animal in the Galaxy dangerous to man, man himself. So he must supply his own indispensable competition. He has no enemy to help him." -Lazarus Long
Sometimes I wonder why people use the word generation with the connotation that it somehow means better than the previous generation. Are children better than their parents?
I think that in the way it's been used with regard to MMO's, again, something gets lost in the context. A generation simply has the benefit of learning from previous games. The second generation of MMO's, like EQ2, WoW, and others had the benefit of time to learn from 1st gen games like UO, EQ and others. Now the third gen of games have had time to learn from both previous generations of games.
Unfortunately, they seem to incrementally improve, but none of them seem to go in wholesale different directions. None of them need to claim that they are 3rd generation MMO's, they ARE 3rd generaation MMO's. The problem with many of 'em, is that they still feature far too many characteristics of the first and second gen.
Until programmers get away from traditional programming paradigms (OOP), we won't have a unique realization of game play. Why? Consider how OOP itself works, it makes the assumption since we live in a world of objects that some how everything can be described in an algorithm from the context solely from the object. But what about physics? Physics is about objects to a degree, but rather physics describes relations between objects. Now, OOP languages sometimes include the idea of abstract classes, static classes, and generics, but none of these aide in truly creating a means to describe the process of physics within a program that is accurate (physics as constants are not objects (static or abstract) ). And why am I picking on the point about physics? Well, because physics is one of the areas that all MMOs (even EVE online) fail to describe properly. Either through the absence of real object collision (no object can share same space with another object...blahblahblah...) or through the lack of total use of the 3d environment (Gee, what if I could swing from this rope over that ledge there...) using physics. So, really all MMOs, despite 3d environments are really 2d rooms, which harken(sp?) back to the days of MUDs (which never has pasted due to this limitation). The next-gen MMO that will come out, for it to really earn the title of next-gen, will need to have a fully realized set of physics, and with it probably been coded in a new language that can illustrate relationships better than any language before (hint: me and friend are making such a language, but for AI theory instead :P). And that's my two cents on it.
-- Brede
MMORPG.COM has worst forum editor ever exists
In many of the mmos I don't suspect any real advance over the current offerings. But I do think the big budget ones have a chance of being 'next gen'- Warhammer, AoC, and especially God of Heroes. Although the difficulty is how you define next gen in the first place. I think in a way twitch skill hasn't been especially high in mmos and advances in this area I could see as being next gen. Or at least, anything that steps away from the get quest,kill mob using routine kill pattern, next mob. Any sort of advancement in gameplay upon that has to be an improvement.
Well, it depends on what you're comparing it with to call it a generation I guess. Else, I guess cars are still in their first generation since the core concept is still 4 wheels on a road.
Each month, a new computer hardware is out. It's always opening a new door for the games. That's where you get a new generation of games. Think for a minute and look at what really changed the market since 1995 and you'll clearly start seing a generation or two and not just in terms of graphics. From vision to possibilities.
I dunno if I will like it.
Boycott EA Games. RIP Sim City.
Generation as far as MMOs is concerned has been kind of loose. The first generation usually simply refers to games released between 1997-1999. Generation 2 has generally been considered to be games released between 2000-2006. Vanguard is generally accepted to be the first 3rd generation release of 2007.
I suppose you could argue till your blue in the face the various attributes of steadily increasing generations, but I think that would be false. Generally speaking generation 2 simply innovated aspects of generation 1. Somewhere in the last two years the term generation had taken on a whole new meaning.
Generation 3 the generational panacea, the cure for what ails us. In my opinion it is a truely preposterous idea to believe that so much mythical change will occur. People talk about all sorts of crazy things when they discuss the 3rd generation. Heres a little secret though. MMOs arent limited by ideas, they are limited by time, money, hardware, infrastructure. It gets truely ridiculous at times, people get all heady when they talk about 3rd gen, you'd think that someone had stumbled upon holodeck technology. They havent. 3rd gen will continue on the path that gen 1 and gen 2 have traveled, it will be limited by the same things that limited those generations. Latency is still one of the biggest problems to overcome, no one can solve that one yet, bandwidth is increasing all the time but there are still bottlenecks all over the place.
I really dont believe that OOP has anything do do with the state of games at all, in fact OOP is probably the greatest thing that ever to happen to programming, arent most modern languages OOP? Traditional programming is structured programming, if indeed something thats only a few decades old can be considered tradition.
You mention physics and a language to handle MMO programming, Im not convinced that architecture at the language level is the problem with mmos. In fact Id say that it has practically nothing to do with it, no matter what your doing your still writing code for the same hardware. Id say that it has more to do with the amount of data you have to push, if an engine requires a great amount of data to update every cycle it will be terribly dependant on client/server communication. Which is a problem because outside the lab you have no control over how other peoples switches, routers, and backbones are configured. I dunno though, you could be onto something, Id hate to quash an idea that could one day change the world
All games are by default 3d representations on 2d media, thats the only hardware we have. Your screen is flat right? Physics model complexity is not limited by peoples techniques but by the hardware thats going to ultimately run the game. Very few gamers have physics boards in their machines. Maybe someday, I do recall the days when I had to purchase a seperate math co processor back in college. Who knows.
-Gooney
WAR IS COMING
Well, technically we will NEVER have a next-game game because by definition it'll always be the next game, never the actual game we're playing (if we HAVE it can't be next-gen) :P
In reality it's all bull$h!t, nothing more than words, marketing and vapor. I don't want "next-gen" games, I want innovative games but most developers won't go for that because it would mean not following the standard set by UO and later on WOW. Dare to be different works brilliantly when a developer gets to work on his own ideas and dreams but the second the marketing people drop in (and/or companies like SOE, EA, M$ and whatnot) creativity is lost, deadlines are set and all of a sudden the accountants call the shots.
Next gen my a$$
I sooooooooo, can't wait.
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Yes. If the parents do anything right, then yes. That's why some families move to other countries to have a better life for their children. That's why little Johnny's father works 18 hour days at ye olde mill so that one day Johnny can becvome a doctor. A big goal of parenting is for your children to do and be better off than yourself, ESPECIALLY if you never had such opportunities. So yes, they are suppose to be. The answer to your question is yes.
There is no doubt in my mind that next-gen video game technology is going to be A LOT better than current video game technology. The games will become better, just like how children become better than their parents, thanks to their parents hard work. In fact, it's these computer programmers who give birth to their sons/daughters of technology.
That being said, I am looking forward to Huxley, Warhammer Online, Age of Conan, Star Trek Online, and definitely Hellgate London.
OOP is good at describing objects, but not behaviors. Consider the issue of physics AGAIN. Name one object that contains all the properties of physics. There is no such entity. Sure, you can plead and say the Universe, but even the Universe is actually considered a COLLECTION in physics. The same with spacetime in some theories. So, the issue with OOP is that it tried to bind behavior to the data encapsulated and it failed to describe the real world, which was it's intended part of its design. Behavioral and data encapsulation only really applies to closed systems like car engines, organ systems, and other mechanical processes, but not physics. Physics, as one professor of it described it to me, is non-mechanical, such that there is no real set of fixed parts that make it go. OOP is basically mechanicism, and physics being the opposite, can never be logically or accurately described by it.
And the plead to popularity of OOP means really nothing when it comes to the mountain of criticisms laid at the feet of OOP. OOP is not the end all, be all, it has uses, but describing physics isn't one of them.
You're supposing a functionalistic argument for physics and MMOs, which doesn't hold when you consider that the majority of RPG events on a table top campaign are not driven by time tables, or random rolls (beyond the roll for hit/miss, success/failure), but rather are driven by the atemporal response to a series of yes/no inquiries (aka If-Then-Else or event driven programming). Because of this, new languages are indeed needed to describe the events more accurately in the context of relationships. Consider how one learns the concept of length; taking a pen, a matchstick, and a ruler, then noticing their similiarities that is not solely dependent on their composition, and only recognized by relational comparison. Programming languages can't even properly describe distance without an algorithm. Granted, I'm plunging the argument deep into CS theory, but we're facing a time where most of the architectures we see even for everyday PCs may become obsolete within less than a decade if certain sets of research in quantum computing and protein/bio-computing continue. So, when you get out of that Turing computer paradigm of yours, please pm me.
-- Brede
Oh, and ladyattis, can I have some of what you are smoking?
Perception is Reality.
It could be example be a lot better AI on npc characters. If You could actually talk and interact with npcs. At the moment most npcs are just stading there, like tree. Npc enemies are attacking if You get near enough, if not then they just stand there or move in they little boxed area. That's not really much of AI. What if npcs would starts to act more like players, that would be something to see.
MMORPG.COM has worst forum editor ever exists
(not graphical -.-)
Because i think that the 2nd Gen of MMOs will be when the NPCs have their own life...and for example....if you started to play that MMO and you see a Kid NPC and after 2 years of playing or something like that...that kid is already gown-up and.....if you plant a tree you will see it fully growth after some time...you know what i mean??......
Well.......just my opinion...
Cheers
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Currently Playing: GTA4, Urban Terror, Aion,Dreamfall:TLJ,Fahrenheit
There will be no true 3rd generation MMO until someone, anyone really takes AI seriously. Until that day it's all more of the same in a prettier package. I've remember smarter AI in EQI's POP raid content than 80% of what's out atm.
1) Think of grouping with you're buds and every so often you get a glimpse of something following you. Next thing you know Bam out of the trees an ambush!!
2) Imagine trading some goods in town when all of a sudden arrows come flying out of nowhere taking down injuring you're friends and NPC's. That's right the Mobs are raiding YOU.
3) Imagine Orcs ore some other group putting a bounty on you're head for camping them. How would it feel having their most elite tracking you down putting you're party in even greater danger. Imagine choosing group mates based on how badly the Mobs hate them.
That my friends (among other things) is my idea of true third generation fun.
Dutchess Zarraa Voltayre
Reborn/Zero Sum/Ancient Legacy/Jagged Legion/Feared/Nuke & Pave.