The day there are commercial breaks in MMO's is the day I quit playing them forever until they are gone.
To be honest, it depends how this is done, there are so many ingenious ways they could cut commercials and generally advertise X company into MMO's that it will just eventually happen.
Just when ppl think commercials they think of the 1min cut through your tv content, which is a misconception games are a completely different medium and require a completely different approach, a way of advertising in games is for instance product placement, no one would ever complaint if there was coca-cola in fallout or even old adverts on the drink dispensers, if anything it would actually add to the immersion, this sort of clever placing is what adverts in game and MMO's will be all about, going to the baker in stormwind city in WoW and being able to get a pizza hut or dominos delivered to your home.
But for the minute MMO's are just not big enough to warrant companies to invest the amount of money needed to persuade the companies to do this. I dont necessarily see this as a bad thing, not all adverts are good or offer convenience tho but as long as they are not disruptive i can accept them.
I want 5. MMOs should be vitural worlds in which you quests. Not just action RPGS you can play with others. We already have that it's called Diablo clones and they don't charge you to play or win.
I am far more likily to play a game with a pay per hour then pay or suck. The $15 bucks (and the 60-50 buy in) are stupidly arbitrary.
I could live with commercials but it would have to be good and you would would have to have the option to pay not to see them. Like AO did or how Hulu works.
I anit an online A-hole so I wouldn't care if it was lost.
This one I fully agree should not be in MMOs.
I will not play a game with a cash shop ever again. A dev job should be to make the game better not make me pay so it sucks less.
With a little bit of intelligent design and the right I.P., advertising in game could be a great thing. Take a game like The Secret World, It's set in the modern world, so why couldn't Times Square add space in virtual N.Y.C. be sold to real companies? Cities have rules in many cases for the number of billboards along their highways, so why not use those similar kinds of restrictions to throttle the number of add space locations and sell billboards to real world companies? Like I stated, in the right gameworld, with a bit of caution, it could really boost a game and give a bit more freedom to the devs to work on making the game better and not just constantly fighting to boost sub numbers. Hell, for that matter, they could sell add blockers in the cash shop to anyone that doesn't want to see them, lol.
Most of your list would never even make it to the final 'idea-board' for mmo's. You have to realize the extensive thought-process that goes into the making of mmo's(the really good/successful ones anyway). Let me go down the list for you to explain.
5. The only way your number 5 would actually happen is if indeed a company made a game specially made to recreate real life in mmo form. And you would have to do just about everything imaginable that you have to do in the real world, in the game. You can bet your secret stash that there are people who would love to play such a game, and indeed there might come a day where a company will make such a game, but do you honestly think a game like WoW would also try to incorporate that into an adventure/magic setting as well? I mean yes, there are games that allow you to get married and what not and you can even adopt a child(another person that also plays the game, not an npc) but those are harmless and mostly are just used to gain extra abilities and what not. Trust me, you will never see anything like what you mentioned in your number 5.
4. Pay-per-hour...again use your brain. The top executives put a lot of thought into how they want to do their pay-plan. Trust me, the idea of pay-per-hour has been passed around before. And it's been shot down just as quickly. 90% of people would not even be able to afford such a payment model, and thus mmo's that would go this route would lose 90% of their potential customers and wouldn't even be able to get past the closed beta stage from lack of customers. You will never see such a payment model because its unrealistic to assume people will actually support such a plan to play a game, they would pack up their shit, and go find a pay-per-month or f2p game to play.
3.Commercial Breaks...Games already have stuff like that, one to name is 9Dragons...i agree with you, VERY annoying. But here's the kicker, the only games we'd have to risk worrying about that are F2P's. Subscription model games like WoW would never interrupt your gameplay with a mandatory commercial break or what not. And for your idea of mounts being Fords and potions being Pepsi...i personally don't see any harm in that, i actually think it sounds a bit fun, maybe the Pepsi potions could give you a little 1 min buff that makes you belch or something. Anyways, there's been instances in time where things like that have happened, but its not interrupting our gameplay any is it?
2.I didn't really understand what you meant with this one, not sure how MMO's are trying/or could make us lose our anonymity so i'll just not comment on this one.
1.You cannot compare a Zynga game to a fullblown MMO. That's like trying to compare a 1990 house phone to an Iphone 4. You just can't do it, you honestly think anything the 1990 house phone has anything to offer to the Iphone 4 that the people that make the Iphone 4 would go ....hey, we should make our phone more like the 1990 house phones. Yes, the idea of having your players advertise for you is appealing, but you have to understand the only reason they do that is because they do not have enough money coming in to advertise PROPERLY themselves. So they HAVE to rely on their players to advertise for them. All of those games are F2P also. There are 2 distinct mmo categories(P2P/F2P) for a reason. They're different. Sure things are similiar, but what goes into the making of them and the things like, whether or not they'd have commercial breaks or make players advertise for them, would also be one of those differences. Most F2P's don't make alot of money so the allure of getting a paycheck from Coca-Cola to play a commercial every 30 minutes or having players bring in their friends to maybe spend more cash on item shop is almost necessary. But to a game like WoW or any other well off P2P game, they don't need it. They know they'll lose more money(from people leaving the game) than they'd gain.
Back in the days when AOL was the first in many areas to provide internet, and it cost... was it 3.95 per hours? Anyhoo... could be argued that we HAD pay per hour back then for gaming. And I tell ya, it sucked big time.
lol.. I wonder how far are we really from commercial breaks in major MMO's.. They could really take the place of loading screens, something like youtube has started to do as the movie buffers..
Annoying as hell, but they would pay the bills so we don't have to..
Disagree entirely about 5, most games are lacking SEVERELY in that department and are just spoon-fed entertainment. There needs to be more varying styles of play and realism shouldn't be labeled as a negative because it's influenced by how the realism is handled. Anything could be labeled a such if done improperly.
Annoying as hell, but they would pay the bills so we don't have to..
See, that's an unlikely posibility.
They'd be more like going for subscription fees and advertising fees. The very same thing cabe networks do. They charge the cable company a per-channel per consumer fee and that is rightfully passed on to the consumer.
But they also have ads.
The problem with ads of course, for anyone who has been watching tv for more than a decade, comercials get longer and longer, with less and less content.
Advertisements take airtime away from programs. Commercial breaks have also become longer. In the 1960s a typical hour-long American show would run for 51 minutes excluding advertisements. Today, a similar program would only be 42 minutes long; a typical 30-minute block of time now includes 22 minutes[6] of programming with six minutes of national advertising and two minutes of local. Some networks even use a 18 minutes of show/12 minutes of advertising split.[citation needed] A television broadcast of the 101-minute film The Wizard of Oz (1939) for instance, could, in the early to mid-1960s, take two hours even with advertisements. Today, a telecast of the same film would last approximately two hours and 15 minutes including advertisements.
In other words, over the course of 10 hours, American viewers will see approximately three hours of advertisements, twice what they would have seen in the 1960s. Furthermore, if a 1960s show is rerun today, the content may be edited or cut by nine minutes to make room for the extra advertisements. In more recent years, that number has grown by an average of two minutes.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug. 12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
They won't go pay per hour ever. With the subscription model they fiqured the highest profit vs the least likely to be canceled amount. That way when folks get burnt out or tired of game a lot won't cancel it. They just let it run on figuring its only 10/15 dollars or that they might want to play at some point in the near future and its not worth the hassle of cancelling. If you go pay per hour you lose that revenue stream entirely.
Seeing as how no MMO released in the past 3 years has made me want to play it, it couldn't really be worse.
Hit the nail on the head. Do whatever you want to the current mmo's, i couldnt care less as they are already unplayable games for morons. For some reason real computer nerds dont like the same games that housewives with 80 IQ like, who woulda thought.
Unfortunately there are many, many, more average intelligence players out there, so they just make games for them.
I've gotta say, these are all great points! I remember how much it sucked paying by the hour to get online with AOL back in the day, and the thought of having to pay for a game like that gives me the chills. I like pretty games just as much as anyone else, but if pretty games = ridiculous prices, I can do without. Graphics don't make a game fun; it's the ideas and mechanics that do that. Anyone remember a little game called Ultima Online? Even back when it was popular, that game was WAY outdated graphically, but it was still FUN. There's a pervasive mentality that a game has to look good amazing for anyone to want it, and it's just not true. I've seen some beautiful games that failed utterly because they lacked compelling core mechanics, and I've seen fugly-ass games do great because they were simply a good time.
Developers need to get their priorities straight and start cutting those budgets if they ever want to get out from under the despotic thumb of those evil publishers.
I've gotta say, these are all great points! I remember how much it sucked paying by the hour to get online with AOL back in the day, and the thought of having to pay for a game like that gives me the chills. I like pretty games just as much as anyone else, but if pretty games = ridiculous prices, I can do without. Graphics don't make a game fun; it's the ideas and mechanics that do that. Anyone remember a little game called Ultima Online? Even back when it was popular, that game was WAY outdated graphically, but it was still FUN. There's a pervasive mentality that a game has to look good amazing for anyone to want it, and it's just not true. I've seen some beautiful games that failed utterly because they lacked compelling core mechanics, and I've seen fugly-ass games do great because they were simply a good time.
I'm not challenging, I'm inquiring--
How many games attempted a beautiful world (graphically), failed to deliver on a "fugly-ass" level (or near it =P) and still were great success?
I grew up with Nintendo but I don't remember being amazed at the graphics, but those were my younger years and there was no interwebz and forums. I do remember Sonic 1 being kind of pretty and omg@dk country, freaking amazed. The backgrounds were just amazing as well.
There are a lot of games released that cutbacks on graphical demands to release to a larger audience but they weren't ugly, there were just less pretty. What successes have actually been ugly?
The problem is, with a lot of people--myself included--is that nice graphics are a perk and it's hard to show, in those first minutes/few hours of play what's great about a game when you feel like you're enduring graphics.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug. 12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
Back in the days when AOL was the first in many areas to provide internet, and it cost... was it 3.95 per hours? Anyhoo... could be argued that we HAD pay per hour back then for gaming. And I tell ya, it sucked big time.
I used to play EQ when I lived in the UK, you pay for your local calls so not only did you pay for your internet service, you paid for the call to your ISP and you paid to play the game, phone bill of 700 pounds (about 1500$) every 3 months were common.
The first pay to play online gaming place I played on was The Sierra Network in 1992.
Was all on dialup, 1000's of people online at a time.
It had some monthly packages that included so many hours... My dad thought 10 hours was enough, per month. (Think it was like $30 for 10 hours... could be wrong though)
It was $7 an hour during prime time hours, and $2 an hour outside of primetime (Remember, this is all dialup and not on the internet.) if you went over your hours
I was ditching school to play (during primetime) killing orcs, giants, etc... at $7 an hour.
The first month's phone bill was over $900!! Got my ass chewed out pretty bad... i think he still holds it against me to this day... almost 20 years later lol.
5 - Realism, I like. It can always be done in different ways to make it not suck. Also it could be applied to give you side quests. Like saving your children or your child dies. It gives your character a serious personal motive beyond just glory and gold to go kill the bastard who did it. Then you could get another quest to find a way to ressurect the child.
4 - PPH, would result in the loss of this customer.
3 - Ads, sooner or later will cause the loss of this customer. I'm on the internet because I have a certain amount of control, and I don't watch tv because of commercials.
2 - Anon, is anyone truly anonymous online? Do they really need to have their name flashed across the screen. I thought that was the whole point of IP tracking and such. I have no fear of the other end of it. My name is James Guy. Now to place personal area of residence and other such information like a neon sign is just ignorant. Besides it isn't like someone couldn't find that stuff out if they tried hard enough anyway. So why fear it.
1 - Feces Book, would cause the total rejection of this customer. I don't have one and only messed around in Myspace for a few months. I don't enjoy them and doubt I ever will that style of system. If anyone else does that is their taste. Mine is to treat that program and others like it with the same revulsion as I would a plague.
0 - Truly the listing of things that could make these games worse could go on and on. I feel that's the reason people tend to rip on the games that are already out. Good read though.
I've gotta say, these are all great points! I remember how much it sucked paying by the hour to get online with AOL back in the day, and the thought of having to pay for a game like that gives me the chills. I like pretty games just as much as anyone else, but if pretty games = ridiculous prices, I can do without. Graphics don't make a game fun; it's the ideas and mechanics that do that. Anyone remember a little game called Ultima Online? Even back when it was popular, that game was WAY outdated graphically, but it was still FUN. There's a pervasive mentality that a game has to look good amazing for anyone to want it, and it's just not true. I've seen some beautiful games that failed utterly because they lacked compelling core mechanics, and I've seen fugly-ass games do great because they were simply a good time.
There are a lot of games released that cutbacks on graphical demands to release to a larger audience but they weren't ugly, there were just less pretty. What successes have actually been ugly?
When I first came across Runescape, it was a bit after I had experienced games like Quake 3, Everquest: Shadows of Luclin, Mechwarrior 4 and USAF, I found that game to look absolutely horrible.. I came across it from just surfing the web looking for something new and when i tried it, the game's graphics completely made me unable to really enjoy it. I forgot about it..
Fast forward about 3 years and all of a sudden people are talking about how awesome the game is etc.. My friends are telling me about all these experiences they had and things that they have accomplished in the world.. On the forums, people were talking about how deep the game was and what you could do and make.. All I seen was crappy graphics, but those same crappy graphics held together I suppose what was one of the better indie sandboxes ever created..
People dumped money into that game and probably still do, and to me it was beyond ugly.. I hear they improved the graphics a bit, but I just never went back..
But you are probably right nowadays though, the graphics will always come first because the screenshots come first therefore the companies give us the power to judge from the pictures they present and flood the web with..
More realism, a bad idea? Not really, not enough MMOs attempt to create a realistic magic system. It is most certainly possible and if done properly would be a huge blast!
I think you are confusing realism with believabilty.
We don't want the mundane realism of our lives in our games - you don't want to have to unclog your virtual toilet before you go on a raid and have to leave early to go pick up your virtual kids.....that's reality....
It seems like a lot of people are misunderstanding the author's intent and many are misusing the word 'real'. Magic isn't real. Neither are fantasy worlds. But they can be believable.
Dunno if it was mentioned, but way back in the early days we did have to pay per hour for our online games..Quantum Link, AOL, Compuserve...et al...premium content and charges per hour out the back end...some people really do have no sense of history.
Comments
Looking at these makes me a really happy panda! MMOs are fantastic at the moment compared to this!
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
To be honest, it depends how this is done, there are so many ingenious ways they could cut commercials and generally advertise X company into MMO's that it will just eventually happen.
Just when ppl think commercials they think of the 1min cut through your tv content, which is a misconception games are a completely different medium and require a completely different approach, a way of advertising in games is for instance product placement, no one would ever complaint if there was coca-cola in fallout or even old adverts on the drink dispensers, if anything it would actually add to the immersion, this sort of clever placing is what adverts in game and MMO's will be all about, going to the baker in stormwind city in WoW and being able to get a pizza hut or dominos delivered to your home.
But for the minute MMO's are just not big enough to warrant companies to invest the amount of money needed to persuade the companies to do this. I dont necessarily see this as a bad thing, not all adverts are good or offer convenience tho but as long as they are not disruptive i can accept them.
I want 5. MMOs should be vitural worlds in which you quests. Not just action RPGS you can play with others. We already have that it's called Diablo clones and they don't charge you to play or win.
I am far more likily to play a game with a pay per hour then pay or suck. The $15 bucks (and the 60-50 buy in) are stupidly arbitrary.
I could live with commercials but it would have to be good and you would would have to have the option to pay not to see them. Like AO did or how Hulu works.
I anit an online A-hole so I wouldn't care if it was lost.
This one I fully agree should not be in MMOs.
I will not play a game with a cash shop ever again. A dev job should be to make the game better not make me pay so it sucks less.
This.
It's like saying, "I want a realistic shooter" and people think you mean you want a guy where you have to piss and shit but really you mean ArmA2.
The rest of the article was true enough, though.
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Me and a Friend are Bad At Games
With a little bit of intelligent design and the right I.P., advertising in game could be a great thing. Take a game like The Secret World, It's set in the modern world, so why couldn't Times Square add space in virtual N.Y.C. be sold to real companies? Cities have rules in many cases for the number of billboards along their highways, so why not use those similar kinds of restrictions to throttle the number of add space locations and sell billboards to real world companies? Like I stated, in the right gameworld, with a bit of caution, it could really boost a game and give a bit more freedom to the devs to work on making the game better and not just constantly fighting to boost sub numbers. Hell, for that matter, they could sell add blockers in the cash shop to anyone that doesn't want to see them, lol.
Warhammer fanatic since '85.
Most of your list would never even make it to the final 'idea-board' for mmo's. You have to realize the extensive thought-process that goes into the making of mmo's(the really good/successful ones anyway). Let me go down the list for you to explain.
5. The only way your number 5 would actually happen is if indeed a company made a game specially made to recreate real life in mmo form. And you would have to do just about everything imaginable that you have to do in the real world, in the game. You can bet your secret stash that there are people who would love to play such a game, and indeed there might come a day where a company will make such a game, but do you honestly think a game like WoW would also try to incorporate that into an adventure/magic setting as well? I mean yes, there are games that allow you to get married and what not and you can even adopt a child(another person that also plays the game, not an npc) but those are harmless and mostly are just used to gain extra abilities and what not. Trust me, you will never see anything like what you mentioned in your number 5.
4. Pay-per-hour...again use your brain. The top executives put a lot of thought into how they want to do their pay-plan. Trust me, the idea of pay-per-hour has been passed around before. And it's been shot down just as quickly. 90% of people would not even be able to afford such a payment model, and thus mmo's that would go this route would lose 90% of their potential customers and wouldn't even be able to get past the closed beta stage from lack of customers. You will never see such a payment model because its unrealistic to assume people will actually support such a plan to play a game, they would pack up their shit, and go find a pay-per-month or f2p game to play.
3.Commercial Breaks...Games already have stuff like that, one to name is 9Dragons...i agree with you, VERY annoying. But here's the kicker, the only games we'd have to risk worrying about that are F2P's. Subscription model games like WoW would never interrupt your gameplay with a mandatory commercial break or what not. And for your idea of mounts being Fords and potions being Pepsi...i personally don't see any harm in that, i actually think it sounds a bit fun, maybe the Pepsi potions could give you a little 1 min buff that makes you belch or something. Anyways, there's been instances in time where things like that have happened, but its not interrupting our gameplay any is it?
2.I didn't really understand what you meant with this one, not sure how MMO's are trying/or could make us lose our anonymity so i'll just not comment on this one.
1.You cannot compare a Zynga game to a fullblown MMO. That's like trying to compare a 1990 house phone to an Iphone 4. You just can't do it, you honestly think anything the 1990 house phone has anything to offer to the Iphone 4 that the people that make the Iphone 4 would go ....hey, we should make our phone more like the 1990 house phones. Yes, the idea of having your players advertise for you is appealing, but you have to understand the only reason they do that is because they do not have enough money coming in to advertise PROPERLY themselves. So they HAVE to rely on their players to advertise for them. All of those games are F2P also. There are 2 distinct mmo categories(P2P/F2P) for a reason. They're different. Sure things are similiar, but what goes into the making of them and the things like, whether or not they'd have commercial breaks or make players advertise for them, would also be one of those differences. Most F2P's don't make alot of money so the allure of getting a paycheck from Coca-Cola to play a commercial every 30 minutes or having players bring in their friends to maybe spend more cash on item shop is almost necessary. But to a game like WoW or any other well off P2P game, they don't need it. They know they'll lose more money(from people leaving the game) than they'd gain.
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
Please stop giving the likes of Cryptic ideas.
Give me liberty or give me lasers
Back in the days when AOL was the first in many areas to provide internet, and it cost... was it 3.95 per hours? Anyhoo... could be argued that we HAD pay per hour back then for gaming. And I tell ya, it sucked big time.
lol.. I wonder how far are we really from commercial breaks in major MMO's.. They could really take the place of loading screens, something like youtube has started to do as the movie buffers..
Annoying as hell, but they would pay the bills so we don't have to..
Disagree entirely about 5, most games are lacking SEVERELY in that department and are just spoon-fed entertainment. There needs to be more varying styles of play and realism shouldn't be labeled as a negative because it's influenced by how the realism is handled. Anything could be labeled a such if done improperly.
As for the rest, I agree with.
See, that's an unlikely posibility.
They'd be more like going for subscription fees and advertising fees. The very same thing cabe networks do. They charge the cable company a per-channel per consumer fee and that is rightfully passed on to the consumer.
But they also have ads.
The problem with ads of course, for anyone who has been watching tv for more than a decade, comercials get longer and longer, with less and less content.
Advertisements take airtime away from programs. Commercial breaks have also become longer. In the 1960s a typical hour-long American show would run for 51 minutes excluding advertisements. Today, a similar program would only be 42 minutes long; a typical 30-minute block of time now includes 22 minutes[6] of programming with six minutes of national advertising and two minutes of local. Some networks even use a 18 minutes of show/12 minutes of advertising split.[citation needed] A television broadcast of the 101-minute film The Wizard of Oz (1939) for instance, could, in the early to mid-1960s, take two hours even with advertisements. Today, a telecast of the same film would last approximately two hours and 15 minutes including advertisements.
In other words, over the course of 10 hours, American viewers will see approximately three hours of advertisements, twice what they would have seen in the 1960s. Furthermore, if a 1960s show is rerun today, the content may be edited or cut by nine minutes to make room for the extra advertisements. In more recent years, that number has grown by an average of two minutes.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
I think eventually there will be an MMO on facebook (Much More MMO like then anything currently). This will strike 1/2/3 out at once!
They won't go pay per hour ever. With the subscription model they fiqured the highest profit vs the least likely to be canceled amount. That way when folks get burnt out or tired of game a lot won't cancel it. They just let it run on figuring its only 10/15 dollars or that they might want to play at some point in the near future and its not worth the hassle of cancelling. If you go pay per hour you lose that revenue stream entirely.
I can already read Smedley's mind:
Oooo! Pay per hour! Yes! Time to increase the shuttle times to 20 min!
Hit the nail on the head. Do whatever you want to the current mmo's, i couldnt care less as they are already unplayable games for morons. For some reason real computer nerds dont like the same games that housewives with 80 IQ like, who woulda thought.
Unfortunately there are many, many, more average intelligence players out there, so they just make games for them.
I've gotta say, these are all great points! I remember how much it sucked paying by the hour to get online with AOL back in the day, and the thought of having to pay for a game like that gives me the chills. I like pretty games just as much as anyone else, but if pretty games = ridiculous prices, I can do without. Graphics don't make a game fun; it's the ideas and mechanics that do that. Anyone remember a little game called Ultima Online? Even back when it was popular, that game was WAY outdated graphically, but it was still FUN. There's a pervasive mentality that a game has to look good amazing for anyone to want it, and it's just not true. I've seen some beautiful games that failed utterly because they lacked compelling core mechanics, and I've seen fugly-ass games do great because they were simply a good time.
Developers need to get their priorities straight and start cutting those budgets if they ever want to get out from under the despotic thumb of those evil publishers.
I'm not challenging, I'm inquiring--
How many games attempted a beautiful world (graphically), failed to deliver on a "fugly-ass" level (or near it =P) and still were great success?
I grew up with Nintendo but I don't remember being amazed at the graphics, but those were my younger years and there was no interwebz and forums. I do remember Sonic 1 being kind of pretty and omg@dk country, freaking amazed. The backgrounds were just amazing as well.
There are a lot of games released that cutbacks on graphical demands to release to a larger audience but they weren't ugly, there were just less pretty. What successes have actually been ugly?
The problem is, with a lot of people--myself included--is that nice graphics are a perk and it's hard to show, in those first minutes/few hours of play what's great about a game when you feel like you're enduring graphics.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
I used to play EQ when I lived in the UK, you pay for your local calls so not only did you pay for your internet service, you paid for the call to your ISP and you paid to play the game, phone bill of 700 pounds (about 1500$) every 3 months were common.
The first pay to play online gaming place I played on was The Sierra Network in 1992.
Was all on dialup, 1000's of people online at a time.
It had some monthly packages that included so many hours... My dad thought 10 hours was enough, per month. (Think it was like $30 for 10 hours... could be wrong though)
It was $7 an hour during prime time hours, and $2 an hour outside of primetime (Remember, this is all dialup and not on the internet.) if you went over your hours
I was ditching school to play (during primetime) killing orcs, giants, etc... at $7 an hour.
The first month's phone bill was over $900!! Got my ass chewed out pretty bad... i think he still holds it against me to this day... almost 20 years later lol.
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I often do not agree with the editors, but you hit this one in the center of the board. All the things you mentioned are very bad for all mmo's.
5 - Realism, I like. It can always be done in different ways to make it not suck. Also it could be applied to give you side quests. Like saving your children or your child dies. It gives your character a serious personal motive beyond just glory and gold to go kill the bastard who did it. Then you could get another quest to find a way to ressurect the child.
4 - PPH, would result in the loss of this customer.
3 - Ads, sooner or later will cause the loss of this customer. I'm on the internet because I have a certain amount of control, and I don't watch tv because of commercials.
2 - Anon, is anyone truly anonymous online? Do they really need to have their name flashed across the screen. I thought that was the whole point of IP tracking and such. I have no fear of the other end of it. My name is James Guy. Now to place personal area of residence and other such information like a neon sign is just ignorant. Besides it isn't like someone couldn't find that stuff out if they tried hard enough anyway. So why fear it.
1 - Feces Book, would cause the total rejection of this customer. I don't have one and only messed around in Myspace for a few months. I don't enjoy them and doubt I ever will that style of system. If anyone else does that is their taste. Mine is to treat that program and others like it with the same revulsion as I would a plague.
0 - Truly the listing of things that could make these games worse could go on and on. I feel that's the reason people tend to rip on the games that are already out. Good read though.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
"Love can be innocent and can be sweet, but sometimes about as nice as rotting meat."
all of the things he also mentioned would never happen in a million years. not in the way he was going on about them at least.
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
When I first came across Runescape, it was a bit after I had experienced games like Quake 3, Everquest: Shadows of Luclin, Mechwarrior 4 and USAF, I found that game to look absolutely horrible.. I came across it from just surfing the web looking for something new and when i tried it, the game's graphics completely made me unable to really enjoy it. I forgot about it..
Fast forward about 3 years and all of a sudden people are talking about how awesome the game is etc.. My friends are telling me about all these experiences they had and things that they have accomplished in the world.. On the forums, people were talking about how deep the game was and what you could do and make.. All I seen was crappy graphics, but those same crappy graphics held together I suppose what was one of the better indie sandboxes ever created..
People dumped money into that game and probably still do, and to me it was beyond ugly.. I hear they improved the graphics a bit, but I just never went back..
But you are probably right nowadays though, the graphics will always come first because the screenshots come first therefore the companies give us the power to judge from the pictures they present and flood the web with..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxymoron
I think you are confusing realism with believabilty.
We don't want the mundane realism of our lives in our games - you don't want to have to unclog your virtual toilet before you go on a raid and have to leave early to go pick up your virtual kids.....that's reality....
It seems like a lot of people are misunderstanding the author's intent and many are misusing the word 'real'. Magic isn't real. Neither are fantasy worlds. But they can be believable.
Dunno if it was mentioned, but way back in the early days we did have to pay per hour for our online games..Quantum Link, AOL, Compuserve...et al...premium content and charges per hour out the back end...some people really do have no sense of history.