I think I have played every single game on the games list here, asian titles included. There have only been two asian games I ever had any time for. Atlantica and Zentia and I wouldn't say either of them really blew me away. But saying that there are only a handful of western titles I would constitute as beeing "Good" games. This whole mmorpg industry needs a good kick up the bum imo, western, asian or otherwise.
"Japanese console developers have long been discussing how their Western counterparts managed to scream far ahead of them in terms of design, and it seems they've actively been trying to catch up in recent years, or at the very least shake up their own preconceived notions of what a game should be. "
What you are saying is so extremely vague. Which Japanese developers? Which Western counterparts? Which genre? Which design-aspect? Is it map design, game mechanic design, character design, story design or something else? Even better : give us the names of which Japanese console games they are comparing to which Western console games.
Just because a significant amount of readers are willing to swallow your words as true, it doesn't mean that all of us are reckless enough to do so.
I don't really understand what you are talking about. Asian game companies are the ones that create most of the mmorpgs. Some of the best mmorpgs come from Korea. What game does the NA have to call their own? World of Warcraft? Oh wait, there's Wizards101... Seriously your article makes no since! Most of the games in the NA besides maybe like 10 have been translated into English from overseas, and your article sounds like it saying we have better games when we don't even have any games to call our own besides a few. Besides the carbon copy mmorpg are so easy to spot and avoid it's not even worth complaining about.
I don't really understand what you are talking about. Asian game companies are the ones that create most of the mmorpgs. Some of the best mmorpgs come from Korea. What game does the NA have to call their own? World of Warcraft? Oh wait, there's Wizards101... Seriously your article makes no since! Most of the games in the NA besides maybe like 10 have been translated into English from overseas, and your article sounds like it saying we have better games when we don't even have any games to call our own besides a few. Besides the carbon copy mmorpg are so easy to spot and avoid it's not even worth complaining about.
I'm sorry....but what?...let me list some for you
Everquest 1 and 2
Lord of the Rings Online
Rift
Ultima Online
Dark Age of Camelot
World of Warcraft
Vanguard
Star Wars Galaxies
Guild Wars
Asheron's Call
Dungeons and Dragons Online
and a few others I cant think of off the top of my head. So his article, to me at least, shows we DO have better games. Only a few non NA games stand out to me and they aren't Asian. For example, Eve Online.
Personally, I truly am hoping that games like ArcheAge and Age of Wulin blow me away, I like the Eastern culture(s) but so far the games have been extremely shallow and seemingly aimed at non thinkers.
There's only 2 asian MMOs that I've played, which I stuck around for more than 3 months. Atlantica Online and Maplestory. I don't really consider Maplestory an MMO, it's more of a social online game with fighting included (just my take on it). And Atlantica Online I loved because it took me back to old final fantasy style turn based fighting. I only left Atlantica because I kept spending money on it, and I still drop in time to time in Maplestory to hang out with my friends. Other than that, every asian mmo I've played are all nearly the same, and aren't very fun.
And for the poster above me, you forgot Neverwinter Nights, which started it all
FFXI (at least for me ) was an amazing game , but in the ACTUAL mmorpg market ? nah , too many timesinks (well abyssea ...) but as mmorpg? was amazing , CoP expansion was like playing a FF offline (the videos, the history , Lion )
Aion? well , isnt that bad, yeah the game lacked content , and was a grindfest after lvl 30 , but the gameplay was good
Tera , only played the korean beta , but the game has potential , same for Blade and soul .
Asians mmorpgs arent worth it , and are cloned to death , but hey maybe they will learn....that no1 likes to play the same formula for years .............
oh almost forgot......the THOUSANDS of "point and click" games that asians have recycled ......pfff
why create 1000 fail games when u can use that time to create 5? 10? awesome games .....but nah...lets create the same game over and over and over
dont forget the classic "warrior , cleric , mage ,thief" setup that plagued those games...
some add original classes (Forsaken world bard and vampire) at least is something different.
Same goes for "childish" games ,like the 1 this site like to announce....Remanant knights? blah
one aspect you forget to mention op is on 2 front :
1:a lot of lore in the game or a lot of feeling are hard to translate how you translate word is easy but translating feeling?
very hard take an american and a british
one will find what the american fun if he is in america but if he is in britain he might be pumelled to death.
hell both still speak english here,imagine an asian and the american market lol or the reverse.often we send game and people out there in asia are like,what was the joke<asian say beats me .
2:also most of the game coming from asia gets watered down a ton ,when it gets here it is just a shell of the game
an exemple:a game like loong(loong3d in asia i think)a AAA title but dont try to play the asian version you cant ,and the version we got is version 1.it is like if we received vanilla wow today but we knew cataclysm was avail in asia ( same difference)
so with these two agravating factor it is what ruins the asian game experience of most gamer.
it is one big reason i always hoped asian would release globally .be it in asia or in usa.one game
yes it is a lot of work but it is better then what is happening.
Well, I played Lineage 1/2 about 6 months each, ROM/Aion about 3 months respectively, which in some cases exceed my playing times in most western mmo's. I haven't found one for the long haul however so I guess they all have been missing that something special.
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
One of the big issues with a comparison of Western and Asian games is that many of the Asian games are designed from the ground up as Free 2 Play.
To see how different the two markets are, ask yourself this.... Name a few Free 2 Play Western games that weren't subscription game conversions?
It's apples and oranges. The markets are different, the revenue models are different, the games are different.
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
I have lived in Asia for nearly 10 years, and I think it's clearly a cultural thing. Games are considered strictly for kids here. Any adult who plays games is pretty much considered a loser. So, designers don't really give a hoot about story or depth when they go to make a game. It's about whatever the teenage boys in the target market are into. That would be anime girl toons in high heels and playing with their friends in a "cyber-cafe."
If Asian designers want to tap western markets, they will slap on some story and do their best to figure out what they guess western players will want. They are doing it purely for cash via cash shop sales, so you won't find what a lot of western gamers might call "soul" in Asian games. In other words, they are not games designed by gamers for gamers for the love of a great game concept. They don't have a D&D history. They just copied the template and monetized it.
Western game designers have kind of fallen into this same mould with all the f2p game design in my opinion.
Never seen so much bullshit in 1 post.
Which is amazing, considering you crammed just as much bullshit into 8 words...
Asian developers are obviously not learning anything about the trends and changes in the Western market if they think things like FFA PvP and prison/detention systems are going to fly with Western gamers.
The interview they posted with the Archeage folks over on Massively makes it sound like there will be a PvE "tutorial" in the game and then once again end-game is 100% FFA PvP.
FAIL FAIL FAIL
There is nothing Ultima Online about that, they completely ignore all the lessons UO learned to become a better game and reach it's high point.
Korean MMO's to me are the most aesthetically beautiful graphics out there. This is a matter of opinion of course. I use to play everquest 1 and that game was a grindfest. So for the most part I do not mind that a korean MMO takes longer to play to max level then most games. Aion was great graphics. I loved the game I just recently quit. The issue with that game was how one side could dominate the other. That is where Aion went wrong.
I would rather take a few months to level up in a Korean MMO then get to max level in 3 weeks like Rift. I think the reason a lot of people cry about the grind of a Korean MMO is simple, WoW spoiled them and they like everything to be easy. This is also good because all the little kids quit fairly quickly.
Well, I personally really like the Asian Art Style, this does not mean that I do not like the western Art style either but an Asian game will not lose me due to superficiality.
Where Asian games lose me as a player is when it comes to gameplay, I do not prtend knowing the reason why Asian games have such poor gameplay mechanics, one poster here said due to cultural perception of gaming, but on the other hand this is a bit contradicting of what we know from Korean gaming culture where young and adults are really in to gaming, and they are asian too. So this perspective while valid from that poster maybe something Localised in one area of Asia.
What I do know is when gameplay is bad, and when gameplay is good. And most asian games I have played were , unfortunatelly in their grand majority bad when it came to gameplay. Which I found, in many occasions a pitty, because on the other hand the energy and work put to create the environments and graphics they had was simply going to waste.
I guess maybe, if I may try to make a generalisation of my own, as to why most western players dislike asian MMO's it would be that. In the west players may get attracted by nice graphics, but graphics alone will not keep them playing what seems to be a secondary consideration at first is actually what is the first consideration in the long run, and that is gameplay. While in the east players seems to just enjoy the nice graphic and are ready to go through all the hoops and loops (invloving throwing in some more cash or not) that the game contains no matter what as long as they can enjoy the nice graphics and rewards and proudly show them off as a sign of their status within the virtual world amongst their peers. In the west on the other hand people could care less what their peers would think about them and whether they have that Super Duper Ubber 3 meter glowing sword to parade around or not when it is actually not fun to achieve it. In the west players like to compete but not for the same things as in the east too, so more often than not, what is considered a competitive achievement in the east, it is expected that this achievement is of cooperative nature in the west.
just my two cents.
- Duke Suraknar - Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
I would rather take a few months to level up in a Korean MMO then get to max level in 3 weeks like Rift. I think the reason a lot of people cry about the grind of a Korean MMO is simple, WoW spoiled them and they like everything to be easy. This is also good because all the little kids quit fairly quickly.
Grind means doing the same thing over and over and over. It's not a description of difficulty.
I have lived in Asia for nearly 10 years, and I think it's clearly a cultural thing. Games are considered strictly for kids here. Any adult who plays games is pretty much considered a loser.
so the adults that design and develop games in asia are even more losers for making games, right? LOL i doubt the statement in red is true
Won Il: In Korea, the player profiles vary greatly according to genre. South Korea has a very healthy user pool of players in their early teens or even younger. As for gender, males occupy 70~80% of the MMOG gaming population and for more casual games, our user base ranges from younger school children to men and women in their thirties.
From this it looks like the more casual the game, the more biased the population trend is toward a younger audience.
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
Aion has definitely improved quite a bit since its launch. IMO it's one of the most polished MMOs available right now and a gem of a game. I'd recommend that any fan of pvp (and DAoC, since it shares some similarities) check out the free trial.
They can adjust a game all day, but they can't help the issue between the keyboard and the chair. Played: UO, DAoC, AC, WoW, EVE, TR, WAR, Aion, Rift, SWTOR, GW2, TSW, ESO, Elite:D Play EVE for free for 21 days
The main issue I see is that players from this new generation of youth simply want more for doing less, which obviously doesn't fit into the traditional mold of how asian mmorpgs are designed.
Well..Can't say I don't find most of the Anime girls drawn in many of the asian games i played ugly.
But a game designer has to draw a line in reaslism at some stage, runnning around with these girls in full stacked out marriage gown fighting uglys with overzized swords and high heels is a bit to much. I don't know really "art style" or a way to capture teen asian boys .
In the west , even if we make unrealistic fantasy models aswell, the asian tend to go far beyond the top.
Some in the west likes this, but my bet is that this is the reason to name one that makes Asian games fail in the west. We want more dirt under our fingernails, dark and gritty.
Comments
I think I have played every single game on the games list here, asian titles included. There have only been two asian games I ever had any time for. Atlantica and Zentia and I wouldn't say either of them really blew me away. But saying that there are only a handful of western titles I would constitute as beeing "Good" games. This whole mmorpg industry needs a good kick up the bum imo, western, asian or otherwise.
From the article:
"Japanese console developers have long been discussing how their Western counterparts managed to scream far ahead of them in terms of design, and it seems they've actively been trying to catch up in recent years, or at the very least shake up their own preconceived notions of what a game should be. "
What you are saying is so extremely vague. Which Japanese developers? Which Western counterparts? Which genre? Which design-aspect? Is it map design, game mechanic design, character design, story design or something else? Even better : give us the names of which Japanese console games they are comparing to which Western console games.
Just because a significant amount of readers are willing to swallow your words as true, it doesn't mean that all of us are reckless enough to do so.
I don't really understand what you are talking about. Asian game companies are the ones that create most of the mmorpgs. Some of the best mmorpgs come from Korea. What game does the NA have to call their own? World of Warcraft? Oh wait, there's Wizards101... Seriously your article makes no since! Most of the games in the NA besides maybe like 10 have been translated into English from overseas, and your article sounds like it saying we have better games when we don't even have any games to call our own besides a few. Besides the carbon copy mmorpg are so easy to spot and avoid it's not even worth complaining about.
Smile
I'm sorry....but what?...let me list some for you
Everquest 1 and 2
Lord of the Rings Online
Rift
Ultima Online
Dark Age of Camelot
World of Warcraft
Vanguard
Star Wars Galaxies
Guild Wars
Asheron's Call
Dungeons and Dragons Online
and a few others I cant think of off the top of my head. So his article, to me at least, shows we DO have better games. Only a few non NA games stand out to me and they aren't Asian. For example, Eve Online.
Personally, I truly am hoping that games like ArcheAge and Age of Wulin blow me away, I like the Eastern culture(s) but so far the games have been extremely shallow and seemingly aimed at non thinkers.
There's only 2 asian MMOs that I've played, which I stuck around for more than 3 months. Atlantica Online and Maplestory. I don't really consider Maplestory an MMO, it's more of a social online game with fighting included (just my take on it). And Atlantica Online I loved because it took me back to old final fantasy style turn based fighting. I only left Atlantica because I kept spending money on it, and I still drop in time to time in Maplestory to hang out with my friends. Other than that, every asian mmo I've played are all nearly the same, and aren't very fun.
And for the poster above me, you forgot Neverwinter Nights, which started it all
FFXI (at least for me ) was an amazing game , but in the ACTUAL mmorpg market ? nah , too many timesinks (well abyssea ...) but as mmorpg? was amazing , CoP expansion was like playing a FF offline (the videos, the history , Lion
)
Aion? well , isnt that bad, yeah the game lacked content , and was a grindfest after lvl 30 , but the gameplay was good
Tera , only played the korean beta , but the game has potential , same for Blade and soul .
Asians mmorpgs arent worth it , and are cloned to death , but hey maybe they will learn....that no1 likes to play the same formula for years .............
oh almost forgot......the THOUSANDS of "point and click" games that asians have recycled ......pfff
why create 1000 fail games when u can use that time to create 5? 10? awesome games .....but nah...lets create the same game over and over and over
dont forget the classic "warrior , cleric , mage ,thief" setup that plagued those games...
some add original classes (Forsaken world bard and vampire) at least is something different.
Same goes for "childish" games ,like the 1 this site like to announce....Remanant knights? blah
kung fu mmorpg? crystal saga ?
come on....
You guys realize this is a Devil's Advocate article right? Not directly Bill's opinion?
While I can't necessarily agree with the blanket statement, I *can* say I don't find most of them very interesting.
one aspect you forget to mention op is on 2 front :
1:a lot of lore in the game or a lot of feeling are hard to translate how you translate word is easy but translating feeling?
very hard take an american and a british
one will find what the american fun if he is in america but if he is in britain he might be pumelled to death.
hell both still speak english here,imagine an asian and the american market lol or the reverse.often we send game and people out there in asia are like,what was the joke<asian say beats me .
2:also most of the game coming from asia gets watered down a ton ,when it gets here it is just a shell of the game
an exemple:a game like loong(loong3d in asia i think)a AAA title but dont try to play the asian version you cant ,and the version we got is version 1.it is like if we received vanilla wow today but we knew cataclysm was avail in asia ( same difference)
so with these two agravating factor it is what ruins the asian game experience of most gamer.
it is one big reason i always hoped asian would release globally .be it in asia or in usa.one game
yes it is a lot of work but it is better then what is happening.
"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
Well I for one enjoy Korean games alot more then Western games, it is all a matter of different play style.
One of the big issues with a comparison of Western and Asian games is that many of the Asian games are designed from the ground up as Free 2 Play.
To see how different the two markets are, ask yourself this.... Name a few Free 2 Play Western games that weren't subscription game conversions?
It's apples and oranges. The markets are different, the revenue models are different, the games are different.
Which is amazing, considering you crammed just as much bullshit into 8 words...
Asian developers are obviously not learning anything about the trends and changes in the Western market if they think things like FFA PvP and prison/detention systems are going to fly with Western gamers.
The interview they posted with the Archeage folks over on Massively makes it sound like there will be a PvE "tutorial" in the game and then once again end-game is 100% FFA PvP.
FAIL FAIL FAIL
There is nothing Ultima Online about that, they completely ignore all the lessons UO learned to become a better game and reach it's high point.
Korean MMO's to me are the most aesthetically beautiful graphics out there. This is a matter of opinion of course. I use to play everquest 1 and that game was a grindfest. So for the most part I do not mind that a korean MMO takes longer to play to max level then most games. Aion was great graphics. I loved the game I just recently quit. The issue with that game was how one side could dominate the other. That is where Aion went wrong.
I would rather take a few months to level up in a Korean MMO then get to max level in 3 weeks like Rift. I think the reason a lot of people cry about the grind of a Korean MMO is simple, WoW spoiled them and they like everything to be easy. This is also good because all the little kids quit fairly quickly.
Well, I personally really like the Asian Art Style, this does not mean that I do not like the western Art style either but an Asian game will not lose me due to superficiality.
Where Asian games lose me as a player is when it comes to gameplay, I do not prtend knowing the reason why Asian games have such poor gameplay mechanics, one poster here said due to cultural perception of gaming, but on the other hand this is a bit contradicting of what we know from Korean gaming culture where young and adults are really in to gaming, and they are asian too. So this perspective while valid from that poster maybe something Localised in one area of Asia.
What I do know is when gameplay is bad, and when gameplay is good. And most asian games I have played were , unfortunatelly in their grand majority bad when it came to gameplay. Which I found, in many occasions a pitty, because on the other hand the energy and work put to create the environments and graphics they had was simply going to waste.
I guess maybe, if I may try to make a generalisation of my own, as to why most western players dislike asian MMO's it would be that. In the west players may get attracted by nice graphics, but graphics alone will not keep them playing what seems to be a secondary consideration at first is actually what is the first consideration in the long run, and that is gameplay. While in the east players seems to just enjoy the nice graphic and are ready to go through all the hoops and loops (invloving throwing in some more cash or not) that the game contains no matter what as long as they can enjoy the nice graphics and rewards and proudly show them off as a sign of their status within the virtual world amongst their peers. In the west on the other hand people could care less what their peers would think about them and whether they have that Super Duper Ubber 3 meter glowing sword to parade around or not when it is actually not fun to achieve it. In the west players like to compete but not for the same things as in the east too, so more often than not, what is considered a competitive achievement in the east, it is expected that this achievement is of cooperative nature in the west.
just my two cents.
Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
Grind means doing the same thing over and over and over. It's not a description of difficulty.
so the adults that design and develop games in asia are even more losers for making games, right? LOL i doubt the statement in red is true
Quoting Won II Suh CEO Nexon (Korea):
Won Il: In Korea, the player profiles vary greatly according to genre. South Korea has a very healthy user pool of players in their early teens or even younger. As for gender, males occupy 70~80% of the MMOG gaming population and for more casual games, our user base ranges from younger school children to men and women in their thirties.
source: http://www.igda.org/online/quarterly/1_2/mmogdemographics.php
From this it looks like the more casual the game, the more biased the population trend is toward a younger audience.
Well I wouldn't say they are generally bad. But I would absolutley say that they are definatley not for me.
Too much grind.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
The title makes no sense. The 'Devil' is arguing that they are not bad so THAT should be the title of the article.
Also, as someone else said, why discuss games that aren't out. The 'argument' loses it's value with speculation as it's only foundation.
Normally I like these discussions, not so much for this one.
Aion has definitely improved quite a bit since its launch. IMO it's one of the most polished MMOs available right now and a gem of a game. I'd recommend that any fan of pvp (and DAoC, since it shares some similarities) check out the free trial.
They can adjust a game all day, but they can't help the issue between the keyboard and the chair.
Played: UO, DAoC, AC, WoW, EVE, TR, WAR, Aion, Rift, SWTOR, GW2, TSW, ESO, Elite:D
Play EVE for free for 21 days
I enjoy quite a few asian mmos.
The main issue I see is that players from this new generation of youth simply want more for doing less, which obviously doesn't fit into the traditional mold of how asian mmorpgs are designed.
Well..Can't say I don't find most of the Anime girls drawn in many of the asian games i played ugly.
But a game designer has to draw a line in reaslism at some stage, runnning around with these girls in full stacked out marriage gown fighting uglys with overzized swords and high heels is a bit to much. I don't know really "art style" or a way to capture teen asian boys .
In the west , even if we make unrealistic fantasy models aswell, the asian tend to go far beyond the top.
Some in the west likes this, but my bet is that this is the reason to name one that makes Asian games fail in the west. We want more dirt under our fingernails, dark and gritty.