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General: Five Ways MMOs Could Be Worse
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Most of us like to spend time ripping and tearing at MMOs that may not be our proverbial 'cup of tea'. But in The List today, MMORPG.com Lead Writer Bill Murphy opines that the MMOs we play could actually be MUCH worse. Check out Bill's thoughts about ways in which MMOs could be worse and then add a few of your own in the comments.
I was watching that “Secret Millionaire” show on TV recently. I know, I’m a sucker for crap like that. But I watched these community organizations on the show do some truly amazing work for people that really needed help in their lives, and it got me to thinking about how much I have to be thankful for in my own life. I mean, when the worst I have to worry about on a daily basis is how much longer I have to wait until I can go home from my day job things can’t be all that bad. So for this week’s List I thought we’d try a little exercise in perspective and talk about the ways in which MMO gaming could be much, much worse.
Read more of Bill Murphy's The List: Five Ways MMOs Could Be Worse.
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Comments
Nice. With just a little bit of word-smithing, you could have turned this into a great April fools joke of upcoming game "features".
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
If there are adds in my game, that game better damn well give me full features for free!
If devs actually start doing the pay-to-win theme you can just pretty much exclude me from mmos all together.
^ As soon as pay to win happens, the gloves are off. Profits down? Release Tier 25! Or worse yet, release straight stat increases, better proficiencies at crafting, new recipes...the list goes on.
And "Hey, gaming hasn't changed in 6 years, but it hasn't gotten worse! Stale just tastes nasty but it doesn't kill.". Hopefully Tera and SWG take hold. Like most, I don't want a wow-killer, I want something to make WoW start caring again.
Their April Fools' patch notes are funny! omg hilarious but then you begin to realize the stuff they mock themselves on, some of it, is things players have been concerned about. It only makes it clear that they truly are reading our threads, and just don't care. Hardcore PVP people, polish aside, are dropping off RIFT in droves too because the devs there clearly have favorites as well. Mana-drain should ba threat to casters, it shouldn't mean certain doom. Even on WoW's aesthetics, characters have desired a character customeization tab, and the patch notes mocked it.
They're too big to care and all anyone else cares about is following WoW's model.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
Seeing as how no MMO released in the past 3 years has made me want to play it, it couldn't really be worse.
I cant disagree enough on 4. The asian model is per hour and it works very very well.
Theres a number of reasons its better.
1. Culls botting - why pay for a bot to play
2. Pay for YOUR play not the hardcores.
Why should a working family man who in a lot of cases taxes are already paying for that no life to sit at home on benefits lapping up a MMO and worse still that same working family man is paying for the habit of when they don;t remoteley cost the same in overheads.
A hourly rate forces them to starve to play, cut down on play or heavesn forbid get off their backsides and get a job.
3. Can aid against gaming addiction with a set budget per month and certainly in some asian titles hours above the 40 hr payment coming at a premium price so people budget their time better rather than spending every waking moment online.
I would personally love to see a western title adopt a 40 hr per month flat fee with per hour charges afterwards. I have always hated the fact I work and have a family and I pay the same as those who have absolutely no life and are often being funded by my taxes to sit at home and play x not only are those who keep the genre alive paying the same we get shafted in game as everything these days is time based grinds.
I'll not even get started on RMT and the hollier than thou attitude those same benefit claiming sit at home on a MMO all day scum have against someone with spare income using to get a leg up in a game to get on a even playing field.
Just a little note regarding the Pay-per-hour idea... It was done... that's where it all actually began. Look into the history of Neverwinter Nights (on AOL & before). The $10 monthly subscription plan from Ultima Online was a wonderful breakthrough for those of us who didn't have a cocaine habit or gambling addiction we could give up in order to pay for online RPGs.
If brute force isn't working, you're not using enough.
Watch as this article is brought up at the next big meeting at Activision as their next big idea...
Important facts:
1. Free to Play games are poorly made.
2. Casuals are not all idiots, but idiots call themselves casuals.
3. Great solo and group content are not mutually exclusive, but they suffer when one is shoved into the mold of the other. The same is true of PvP and PvE.
4. Community is more important than you think.
Pay by hour would be bad, however you know that a lot of mmo's over in Asia already have that payment model, just glad we dont do that here.
Commercial breaks. We are not quite here, however lotro is headed that way big time. Every time you load or zone you see a commercial advertising there store, at lest is not in your face when player,except that ugly store button. Se we kind of already have commercial breaks.
We already have pay to win in several games lol.
So yes the others would make it kind of bad.
However I will add this were already at the tipping point for mmo's vs the suck factor. Last year was the worst, and this year is not looking to bright.
All of what you said assumes an hourly rate of what, 5 cents per hour? I recall back in the early days of online gaming playing $6.00/hr off peak, $15.00/hr on peak to play Mechwarrior, and let me tell you, the charges added up pretty fast.
So pay by the hour can be a good idea, but only if done right, which is true with any sub model.
You can bet that if a western MMO were to adopt a 40hr per month flat fee, it would come in no less than probably 10.00/month. So are you really saving anything with your suggestion?
And if you think companies are really interested in blling for dollar amounts much less than this (per customer) then you'd better study up a bit more on the cost of doing business. They are lower than they've ever been, but in truth, no one wants to sell you 2.00 of merchandise or services, just not cost effective, even in this computer age.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Not surprisingly, except for facebook and commercials, your list read like "what is already wrong with MMOs" to me. I know most of todays players dont want a deep complex, realistic game. But players like me are willing to invest more into them, and that is what we are looking for. Not just another game. Pay by th hour seems like a great option most companies overlook because they actually help the end-user more than the publisher's pocketbook in many cases. And please go on with your anonymity. Showing respect and courtesy is much too challenging for most of today's gamers anyway.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Along the lines of number 3 they have done some form of advertising. Ncsoft has done this with their robot game and there dungeon crawl game (sorry I can't remember their names. I belive both games are dead).
In the robot fps game they had ads like billboards. Which wasn't bad I actually enjoyed them. It worked well for that game. But for their dungeon crawling game they used 1/3 of your screen for the ad. It was very frustrating.
I'm aware of how it started believe me I had some hellish 56k bills on top of my ultima bills
but I didnt mind it.
Just crunched some figures and for parities argument based on wages and costs Aion china costs about 14p a hour to play.
I play around 20 hrs a week and am deemed the average player. My monthly MMO fees would be roughly £11.20
Jonny the no life who play 14 hours a day and in the current market costs a fortune in overheads would end up with a bill of £54.
As you say though no company would run with it in the west though as quite simply those casuals who use tiny overheads outweigh the hardcore 100-1 so are your largest profit customers, its just annoying and always grates me a bit that those same guys pay for those hardcorers and their shit attitude.
Asia has hourly rate due to the web cafe gaming culture they have and it works for them I still see no reason why at the right hourly cost or included hours then hourly cost it couldnt work in the west though, how many do we all state "It costs less than a trip to the cinema" etc so we already acknoweledge that the entertainment we get is a small cost.
I wouldn't mind some ads in game (please read) but I can't see them working in a fantasy setting.
The Secret World is a great example here -- Why can't their be NFL billboards on the buildings that remain and Mt. Dew soda machines?
Yes I could see it being abused but the Internet is, undeniably, destroying so many industries, why can't it prop some up? Some of the sport/racing games have had ads for a long time, and imo it had a minor positive influence on the immersion--when you go to these games, you see these ads.
Moving trucks that say Uhaul on the side? Why not? The remaining infrastructure of the internet, banded together by hackers and Google? Sure. It's no worse than what some games do making spoof ads like a search engine called Zillion or Yehaw and moving trucks labeled U-PACK. The reference is clear, even if no money is made.
The other day, newspaper chap comes to the door and I decline his intiial request but he goes into his sales speech anyway talking about new low rates blah blah de blah. So since he insisted, I replied with the cold hard truth. As a consumer, I've no reason to pay for the newspaper. Fantastic! I can see in print what my phone just showed me 17 hours ago? Newspapers? NIghtly News? There's no reason for the avarage consumer.
The downside is that the Internet only distributes the news, while I'm not willing to pay for a paper I'll never read, when enough people make the same decision, as so many already have, there's noone to find and discover the news for the internet, besides cell phone pictures from random passers-by. We can talk all day about how in some ways (less ad/tax/whatever influenced political bias but at the same time, less complete reporting).
Maybe Aggregators will start charging and distributing some way, but that's something they should have seen coming years ago and done something about years ago rather than whining now.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
HuH realistic magic system ?!? WTF where do you live ??? in a harry potter book
How is the pay per hour method more wasteful than paying per month and only logging in 10 or so hours?
Seems like that could go a couple of different ways.
Pay by the hour would end with companies paying more attention to hardcores than they should because they pay more money. That's a very bad thing from a business perspective because it alienates the vast majority of gamers.
In fact, this is exactly the reason we in the US have an electorial college instead of a direct democracy because California and Texas would end up getting everything and states with lower populations would be left out.
Life of an MMORPG "addict"
For 7 years, proving that if you quote "fuck" you won't get banned.
I disagree about pay per hour and no ads, I think they would be great alternatives: Pay for free with ads or pay to have them removed, pay for hour or get monthly sub if you end up playing a lot. I think both would be more honest ways to get revenue than so-called F2P games where devs usually do their best to hide the costs of gaming until you get hooked.
I agree about The Facebook Syndrome. Some recruit a friend -benefits are okay, but many Facebook games take that way too far.
I can definitely see in game billboards of advertisement making their way into the game. In fact I think planetside has already done something similar to that right?
"Realistic magic system"... Wow, that made me laugh!
A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true...
You don't get get what realism in mmorpg's mean for the game obviously
In some games with more realism features, the excitement is way higher than in unrealistic games.
Free for all PvP games are more realistic than games like WoW.
Because you can attack everyone, instead of getting som unrealistic message that "you can't attack this player because we carebear"
REALISTIC does not mean a replica of real life, there will still be things that are unrealistic in all mmorpg's, they key is to make use of
credibility, freedom, realism
The lack of these things are why people are not happy with alot of mmorpg's
well alsmot all of that was done in some extend
4. some games did it you paid for like 10 hours then you had 10 haours to play(you still had the monthly fee but still)
3. anarchy had some ads in game, APB had then too if you choose to use the in game voice chat.
2. blizzard are still tryting to push Real ID, not really a issue to me because I will NEVER add someone in my friend list there, and i'm out of SC2 till the new patch
1. well aion have the tweeth thing the facebook lame sauce will not be too far(as ong I can still play without it i'm fine I don't have and WILL NEVER have it)
really I just hope that list is not a <span class="hps" title="Clique para mostrar tradu
Good Article:
1. 100% agree with the Facebook thing. It is very annoying.
2. 100% agree with the Anonymity thing, the RealID broke down a good amount of my liking for Blizzard.
3. Commercials Breaks: Yeah I definantly don't want to see ads that force you to watch, but in-game billboards and stuff like that isn't too bad to me, as long as it matches the game. ex: Beer ads in Tavern.
4. Pay Per Hour: I don't mind if they made that a pay option, I personally wouldn't play a game with that as the only option, but I'm sure plenty of people will. I doubt it would conquer the market.
5. Realism: Agree and disagree. Some added realism is great and add to the game, like fire catches a tree on fire, adding weather, night and day, seasons, these things are cool. While I personally like unrealistic graphics better I don't mind making graphics more Realistic, as long as it doesn't dominate the market. However, aging and true permadeath are giant turn-offs. I don't mind allowing options for people to look older, but actually getting older and frailer is horrible. Too much realism is a reason I hate most Sandbox games, yet the best are Ultima, Eve and Minecraft...sandbox games without the need of annoying realism. Someone needs to make a totally seperate type of entertainment called Virtual Reality for all those who want another reality, not a game.
Another reason I hate realism is because sometimes the people that judge if something is realistic, don't actually know what is realistic. In a debate about realistic armor, specifically female armor, someone said that females can't wear full body armor like men because their upper bodies are too weak...well obviously they wouldn't wear the same size stuff because they are generally smaller, but armor doesn't weigh that much (this is coming from a 5'2'' 105ish lb weakling) and someone that wears armor are likely fit. Another person said Aerith would've lived if she was wearing plate...not true, armor is not good against direct piercing attacks, especially if it is using gravity to make it stronger. I could go on and on about all the stupid "realistic" things that people want in games, but that would take too long.
"Great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about events, and small minds talk about people." - Eleanor Roosevelt
"Americans used to roar like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security." -Norman Vincent Peale
The day there are commercial breaks in MMO's is the day I quit playing them forever until they are gone.