Originally posted by Shayde There's few sci-fi games because there's too many lazy companies who think THEIR elves will be kewler than the other guys elves. Just look at Dark & Light, or Vanguard. They're bringing nothing new to the table... hell Warhammer is only special because it IS Warhammer. If Mythic was making ANY other fantasy game nobody would care. Exhibit A: D&D Online.
Give me a good sci-fi MMO and you'll never see me playing another game. SWG used to have me until they screwed that up... I'd pre-order a 40K mmo right now.
Polls like the one here at MMORPG.com might have something to do with the ratio of Fantasy to Sci-Fi games as well:
Western High Fantasy
8.4%
Mech / Robot
4.5%
Eastern High Fantasy
3.8%
Manga / Anime Fantasy
9.0%
Medieval Fantasy
42.8%
Sci-Fi
18.5%
Space based
4.6%
Super Hero
2.6%
Real World War
3.6%
Real Life
2.1%
Over 14k total votes, Fantasy EASILY the most popular theme. I'm not saying that had anything to do with the Warhammer Online Fantasy vs 40k Decision, just in general.
Richard J. Cox "There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust."
Originally posted by ShaydeIf D&D online had been based on the Forgotten Realms universe it would most likely have been ALOT more successfull, people are just no into that Eberron crap that's pretty much just stiched together from bits and pieces from other Fantasy worlds...
I guess they're thinking something along the lines of 'take the best of everything and put it together'.. problem is no matter how good those pieces are in their original environment, you're still creating 'frankenstein'.
We seem to have a built in biological dislike of things we can place as a cloned from somewhere else, in other words we seem to instinctively appreciate originality.
Nayh.. you had to actually play that to get the "Wrong Realm" idea, and that also took into account that you actually played D&D in that realm.
No.. Turbine just took a license that should have been MMO gold and made a piss-poor game with it. Almost as bad as $OE taking Star Wars and killing it.
You're just looking at it from a different perspective... You're right ofcourse that the D&D name alone is worth gold, but...
Personally i know i made the choice to ignore it completly cause of the 'wrong realm', in fact, i dont know anyone at all that plays D&D:online. I know alot of people who are D&D fans and also play MMO's, after it was clear that this was not Forgotten Realms nobody seemed to even be interested anymore...
And if anyone of them was, the crap you describe they made out of it exactly wouldn't make things better...
(I know one guy who tried it out, he didnt like it, but he didnt know anything about D&D anyway :P ...)
If you ask me, D&D is making a huge mistake by slowly killing off the old established Realms for the sake of one that's just a blend of the others...
"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth." - Henry Mencken
"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg
"And what would you do with a brain if you had one?" - Wizard of Oz
Originally posted by Richard_Mythic Originally posted by Shayde There's few sci-fi games because there's too many lazy companies who think THEIR elves will be kewler than the other guys elves. Just look at Dark & Light, or Vanguard. They're bringing nothing new to the table... hell Warhammer is only special because it IS Warhammer. If Mythic was making ANY other fantasy game nobody would care. Exhibit A: D&D Online.
Give me a good sci-fi MMO and you'll never see me playing another game. SWG used to have me until they screwed that up... I'd pre-order a 40K mmo right now.
Polls like the one here at MMORPG.com might have something to do with the ratio of Fantasy to Sci-Fi games as well:
Western High Fantasy
8.4%
Mech / Robot
4.5%
Eastern High Fantasy
3.8%
Manga / Anime Fantasy
9.0%
Medieval Fantasy
42.8%
Sci-Fi
18.5%
Space based
4.6%
Super Hero
2.6%
Real World War
3.6%
Real Life
2.1%
Over 14k total votes, Fantasy EASILY the most popular theme. I'm not saying that had anything to do with the Warhammer Online Fantasy vs 40k Decision, just in general.
Yes, but Polls arent really all that reliable Most people dont really know what they might like or might not like, they just go with what they feel most secure with...
What those polls tell me is rather that fantasy games are more likely to be sheit because companies are more likely to do a poor job on a fantasy game cause fantasy is what's most people hypotheticly feel secure with. :P
"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth." - Henry Mencken
"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg
"And what would you do with a brain if you had one?" - Wizard of Oz
Originally posted by Richard_Mythic Originally posted by Shayde There's few sci-fi games because there's too many lazy companies who think THEIR elves will be kewler than the other guys elves. Just look at Dark & Light, or Vanguard. They're bringing nothing new to the table... hell Warhammer is only special because it IS Warhammer. If Mythic was making ANY other fantasy game nobody would care. Exhibit A: D&D Online.
Give me a good sci-fi MMO and you'll never see me playing another game. SWG used to have me until they screwed that up... I'd pre-order a 40K mmo right now.
Polls like the one here at MMORPG.com might have something to do with the ratio of Fantasy to Sci-Fi games as well:
Western High Fantasy
8.4%
Mech / Robot
4.5%
Eastern High Fantasy
3.8%
Manga / Anime Fantasy
9.0%
Medieval Fantasy
42.8%
Sci-Fi
18.5%
Space based
4.6%
Super Hero
2.6%
Real World War
3.6%
Real Life
2.1%
Over 14k total votes, Fantasy EASILY the most popular theme. I'm not saying that had anything to do with the Warhammer Online Fantasy vs 40k Decision, just in general.
But is it chicken or the egg?
Are Elflands more popular because they dominate the market, or do they dominate the market because they are what the people want?
Just look at WoW. Sure, it's themed in that genre, but its hugely popular because it is a well built game. Very few bugs, tons of content, very polished system. I can't think of how many times i played WoW and wished it was a speeder I was riding instead of a horse.
I'd even say that that poll is really telling of a great demand for sci-fi based games... because 5 of those poll topics ARE Sci-fi. When you combine them, Sci-Fi themed games would BEAT the fantasy category outright.
But tragically, Sci-fi games are less than 20% of the market share. Sure, STO, Tabula Rasa and Stargate are in the pipeline, with Shadowrun a possibility. Sci-Fi fans have so few MMO's to choose from right now... really only CoH and Eve if you're looking at working/growing games.
I just pray Warhammer blows the doors off the dump so hard that GW says "Hey, why not 40K?". And I'll pretend my Chaos Warrior has a chainsword.
Shayde - SWG (dead) Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled - Some deluded SWG fanboi who pities me. I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too. 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
haha, i completely agree with you, 40k would be a refreshing change in the mmo universe and it would just plain kick ass...i wonder though, will they be limiting the number of chaos players...obviously 75% of players will want to be chaos...and the remaining 25% will just be trying to prove a point :P.
On the one hand, as far as WOW vs WAR goes, WAR 40k would have the advantage of being distinctly different. As poor as the comparison may be, it'd be nice for WAR to be seen as inarguably dissimilar from WOW, even to those who know nothing about it, aside from the artistic style.
On the other, fantasy just seems to be much more popular in general. Sci-fi games seem to be much more risky for MMORPGs. Look at everyone saying WAR40k should be an MMOFPS, as if sci-fi is a bad idea for a RPG
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Originally posted by valo_666 haha, i completely agree with you, 40k would be a refreshing change in the mmo universe and it would just plain kick ass...i wonder though, will they be limiting the number of chaos players...obviously 75% of players will want to be chaos...and the remaining 25% will just be trying to prove a point :P.
And that point?
"Players can die just as well as NPC's"
Shayde - SWG (dead) Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled - Some deluded SWG fanboi who pities me. I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too. 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
Sci-Fi MMOs are still much bigger of a market than most other non-Fantasy MMOs. The success of Anarchy Online coupled with the presence of other MMOs to come such as Auto Assault and as well as upcoming ones like Tabula Rasa and the Star Trek MMO can be used to "justify" why Sci-Fi can be used over Fantasy. Still, I agree that fantasy based ones are the most popular ones especially now that fantasy has a tried and true formula to them. The only reason WAR out of most other fantasy ones like Shayde already said is because of the idea that it is Warhammer, an Intellectual Property that is iconic in look and has a large fan following. Still, as it stands, Warhammer Fantasy seems to enjoy an "easier" transition from the tabletop medium to MMO, whereas we can talk in circles how WAR 40K could be fitted into an MMO, since its a balance betweem honoring the IP and fitting it so it works into the medium.
In my personal opinion, as a long time gamer, not as someone who works for a game company, I think Fantasy is more popular simply because you know what you're getting. You're comfortable there, you know generally how everything works... You have your Elves: tall, skinny, dextrous, good with magic. Dwarves: short, stocky, drink a lot, make good fighters, etc. On down the line, with very minor variations here and there, overall the fantasy world and races therein work the same from setting to setting...
With Sci-Fi on the other hand you really have no idea... Take all the "popular" sci-fi settings out there and compare them to each other... Star Wars, Star Trek, BSG, Dune, 40k, Serenity, Stargate, etc... They're all vastly different... You don't necessarily know going in if you're dealing with 50 years into Earth's future or 50,000 years... You don't know if you have a single planet to deal with or an entire galaxy... Chances are you're not going to be familiar with the races in question... Then you toss in things like flight and lasers and mechs and an infinite possibility of other things based on technology, it can be a bit mind-boggling for some...
And on the flip side of that, BECAUSE there are so many possibilities, BECAUSE there is so much unexplored oppurtunites there, people go into Sci-Fi games with MUCH higher expectations than they would with a Fantasy game... And therefore are generally let down. It's like a double-edged sword, the same thing that scares people away from the Sci-Fi games is also what draws them to it... And when the game isn't up to par, is what causes them to leave... So I guess that is actually kinda a triple bladed sword... which is just kinda weird... So I'm gonna stop rambling now cause I have the feeling nothing I said here makes any sense...
Richard J. Cox "There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust."
Ya fantasy is more popular for sure and with Mythic's experience making DAOC it makes far more sense for them to work on a fantasy MMO rather than a Sci-Fi one when first trying to adapt Warhammer.
Originally posted by Richard_Mythic In my personal opinion, as a long time gamer, not as someone who works for a game company, I think Fantasy is more popular simply because you know what you're getting. You're comfortable there, you know generally how everything works... You have your Elves: tall, skinny, dextrous, good with magic. Dwarves: short, stocky, drink a lot, make good fighters, etc. On down the line, with very minor variations here and there, overall the fantasy world and races therein work the same from setting to setting...
With Sci-Fi on the other hand you really have no idea... Take all the "popular" sci-fi settings out there and compare them to each other... Star Wars, Star Trek, BSG, Dune, 40k, Serenity, Stargate, etc... They're all vastly different... You don't necessarily know going in if you're dealing with 50 years into Earth's future or 50,000 years... You don't know if you have a single planet to deal with or an entire galaxy... Chances are you're not going to be familiar with the races in question... Then you toss in things like flight and lasers and mechs and an infinite possibility of other things based on technology, it can be a bit mind-boggling for some...
And on the flip side of that, BECAUSE there are so many possibilities, BECAUSE there is so much unexplored oppurtunites there, people go into Sci-Fi games with MUCH higher expectations than they would with a Fantasy game... And therefore are generally let down. It's like a double-edged sword, the same thing that scares people away from the Sci-Fi games is also what draws them to it... And when the game isn't up to par, is what causes them to leave... So I guess that is actually kinda a triple bladed sword... which is just kinda weird... So I'm gonna stop rambling now cause I have the feeling nothing I said here makes any sense...
Triple bladed sword?
Can you get the Chaos designers to start working on that? Since I can't have my chainsword, that sounds like a hoot.
But back on topic, I can see where you are coming from, to a point. I think they haven't broken out the Sci-Fi games because they are afraid to invest the big-buckets-of-cash required to design one that goes against the elfish grain. Quite frankly, I think if Warhammer was not attached to this game, and it was just another fantasy mmo, nobody would care. Dark and Light had hype, D&D had hype, hell, Vanguard had hype... but really, do you think they'll make a dent in WoW? The first two barely blipped the radar.
I mean, how many fantasy MMO's have you seen pitched out there that went 'It's like EQ but you ride dragons" or "It's like WoW but with houses" or 'It's like EQ2 but interesting".
Too many in the BIZ look at games like WoW, and think the reason they're successful is because there's elves in it. There's elves in D&D and they didn't sell 100k units. The game's gotta be good. Just look at SWG's meltdown as an example. They SHOULD have had WoW's numbers, but their mismanagement and bugs destroyed the game.
Which is why I think Shadowrun would just KILL as an MMO, but I digress.
Tell the troops to keep up the good work. Blood for the Blood God and all.
Shayde - SWG (dead) Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled - Some deluded SWG fanboi who pities me. I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too. 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
Originally posted by Shayde Originally posted by Richard_Mythic ...
I mean, how many fantasy MMO's have you seen pitched out there that went 'It's like EQ but you ride dragons" or "It's like WoW but with houses" or 'It's like EQ2 but interesting".
Tell the troops to keep up the good work. Blood for the Blood God and all.
Actually when I'm working conventions and stuff I tend to start my pitches along the lines of "This is why it's NOT like <Game X> and here's why..."
And will do!
Richard J. Cox "There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust."
Richard said it very well, which I guess is not surprising considering he's the Mythic community manager, lol.
Fantasy is the 'safe' bet, because it's a little more straightforward and easier to accept in the genre.
I know what he means by the mind-boggling of futuristic stuff, especially with WH40k. If you look at sci-fi one of the problems is determining what the skipped time means for the way things are.
I mean you can look at Back to the Future (Part 2), that's supposedly 2035. If you look at Star Trek, that's roughly 2200-2600 (if I remember correctly). Futurama is the year 3000, which is a thousand years, but still sorta within the grasp of the mind. But how do you represent 40,000 years in the future? That's a gulf of time that's pretty hard to wrap your mind around.
Hopefully WAR will come out and be as successful as we all hope it'll be, and then GW will say 'Okay, we've established that it can be done, greenlight 40k'.
The only thing that scares me about WAR now is the fact that EA bought Mythic. That makes me very very nervous for this game which I want to love. It's like hearing your girlfriend tell you that she might have an STD.
"Because it's easier to nitpick something than to be constructive." -roach5000
Originally posted by Blurr The only thing that scares me about WAR now is the fact that EA bought Mythic. That makes me very very nervous for this game which I want to love. It's like hearing your girlfriend tell you that she might have an STD.
You just have to keep in mind that GW still owns the Warhammer License, EA didn't buy that. GW is still the controlling entity, they still have to approve every single thing that goes into the game. So like Sanya and Mark and everyone has said many times, really nothing is changing as far as the development of WAR is concerned.
Richard J. Cox "There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust."
With Sci-Fi on the other hand you really have no idea... Take all the "popular" sci-fi settings out there and compare them to each other... Star Wars, Star Trek, BSG, Dune, 40k, Serenity, Stargate, etc... They're all vastly different... You don't necessarily know going in if you're dealing with 50 years into Earth's future or 50,000 years... You don't know if you have a single planet to deal with or an entire galaxy... Chances are you're not going to be familiar with the races in question... Then you toss in things like flight and lasers and mechs and an infinite possibility of other things based on technology, it can be a bit mind-boggling for some...
To me this is precisely why the Si-Fi genre need's a bloody good MMO seeing to!
The possiblities are endless! the potential to create something really cool and NEW.
need more content?....Boom a new planet has Just been discovered in sector gamma 12 and we need you *Insert player name here* to investigate. yes its a heap of work for devs and artist's and coder's ..but aint that where we're heading with this MMO buzz anyway?
Bring on the laser guns and the floating citys and the uncharted gas nebulae, I love it!
P.s. If I see one more damnable dwarf that speaks with a scottish accent and loves drinking beer i will be forced to impale myself on my Arcanite Reaper.......Hooooo
1. I have been a warhammer fan for many years and I know as well as anyone that Warhammer has many things about it which are unique even in the Fantasy genre as a whole. Point originality.
2. GW has to approve everything and those kids see everything differently. The game will not only have PvP but it will envolve many P's cooperating to perform tasks which will outmanuever and cause the slaying of many other P's (actual functioning RvR). Seriously with GW I wouldnt be surprised is at some point the outcome of a battle is defined by who captures what point first and holds it (maybe its a crystal which will then fry opposing players). Plus if GW does this like they do everything they will have battles planned so everybody will be playing at such and such time and who ever doesnt represent is gonna have their village burned, their dog kicked, and their heads torn in twain!!!
3. Once again on the point of I'm a fan. Ive heard talk of actual characters from the Warhammer universe being included and being captureable. This means that I could take my Chaos warlord and go beat the hell out of and take prisoner that little punk emperor who rapped my boys in the Albion summer campaign. Also, elves? Dwarves? Who gives a flying crap, I'm talkin about lizardmen, skaven, demons, squigs, gobbos, ogres, tombkings, amazons, beastmen, freakin real evil pointy eared freaks, FREAKIN CHAOS GODS REPRESENTED IN 3D GOODNESS HELLO!!!
WoW was unoriginal and unimportant thankyou and goodnight...
40k be hella hard to make maybe one day but not these days plus much more history in warhammer not warhammer 40kOriginally posted by Morskittar Dodgy? As a negative? Warcraft is nothing more than Warhammer-lite. Both have the same creation story, the same metaphysics, and similar themes (no absolute good and evil). Warcraft just has an infinitely shallower take on the whole deal.
Warcraft "lore" feels like a comic book or anime. Every few years there's a New Menace to Everything That Must Be Stopped. First, orcs from another world. Then it turns out these orcs were duped by Chaos (or... Chaos-lite, from their warp-lite), so they can be good guys (Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch OLOLOL!!!11), because there's an EVILER EVIL that Must Be Stopped If It's The Last Thing We Do. Oh, and they have Elric/Aenarion/Vader on their side. Who's tragic, by the way. Really. Then, that's finished up and it moves on to Bug People.
It's the same villian-of-the-season format that Yu-gi-oh! follows: building up to the next "OMG BIG REVEAL!!!11" but there's not a lot of substance.
Warhammer, on the other hand, follows the form of a history class. Like a book that combines a hybrid of Moorcock's Chaos with Lovecraft, then sticks that in 16th century pre/early-Reformation Germany. It's convoluted, contradictory, thouroughly fascinating, and it doesn't change (much); just like real-life history. It borrows from original sources and finds depth there. There's always more detail to be discovered, new revelations, and established things to debate.
For me, the psuedo-historical/classic swords-and-sorcery style of Warhammer is infinitely more engaging than a lighter, fluffier version. It's like a steak compared to a hamburger, or triple-fermented unfiltered belgian compared to Budweiser. Classic versus mass-market.
We'll see if they pull off the PvP, but when it comes to story, imagery, and graphics, Warhammer is leagues ahead. err i had to add it,,
They didn't do 40K because it would be way too hard. In 40K NONE of the races coexist peacfully, Eldar don't mix with humans, Chaos don't mix with Tau, Tyranids eat anything that moves. An FPS would maybe work, but you would end up with balance issues.
Now an MMO version of Necromunda or Inquisitor. That would be amazing.
Persona,lly i aam a little concerned about this game because it seems a lot of the P.R for this game so far is that its Warhammer based.
Dont get me wrong tho i love warhammer its just that World of Warcraft played to its name too and it turned out to a pretty generick game with no real inovation. My question is will Warhammer be another ginerick fantasy mmo with a warhammer flavour or will it be a warhammer fantasy game with some inovative features in it.
And remember when WoW was at beta a lot of additional stuff was promissed back then that didnt make it into the game. Just like there is a lot of stuff in Warhammer that is promissed for when the game goes retail.
Originally posted by LordSlater Persona,lly i aam a little concerned about this game because it seems a lot of the P.R for this game so far is that its Warhammer based. Dont get me wrong tho i love warhammer its just that World of Warcraft played to its name too and it turned out to a pretty generick game with no real inovation. My question is will Warhammer be another ginerick fantasy mmo with a warhammer flavour or will it be a warhammer fantasy game with some inovative features in it. And remember when WoW was at beta a lot of additional stuff was promissed back then that didnt make it into the game. Just like there is a lot of stuff in Warhammer that is promissed for when the game goes retail. Makes tyou think dont it
i DID wait a long time for WoW, but i dont really recall what the promises actual were.. can you enlighten me? :P my reason to start playing wow, was because of the thrilling experince of adventuring with other players in a large world - nothing else(which basically was the normal thing in every single MMO in the entire world). and if i remember, that was the only promise they made.
while WAR made some more direct promises: lots of pvp(already stated, city sieging), skills over gear(which, after 1 year of WoW, is the one thing i need), plenty of costumization for your characters.
Originally posted by AXXT WAR will be better than WoW if they do it right. This is becaus of numerous reasons. 1. I have been a warhammer fan for many years and I know as well as anyone that Warhammer has many things about it which are unique even in the Fantasy genre as a whole. Point originality. 2. GW has to approve everything and those kids see everything differently. The game will not only have PvP but it will envolve many P's cooperating to perform tasks which will outmanuever and cause the slaying of many other P's (actual functioning RvR). Seriously with GW I wouldnt be surprised is at some point the outcome of a battle is defined by who captures what point first and holds it (maybe its a crystal which will then fry opposing players). Plus if GW does this like they do everything they will have battles planned so everybody will be playing at such and such time and who ever doesnt represent is gonna have their village burned, their dog kicked, and their heads torn in twain!!! 3. Once again on the point of I'm a fan. Ive heard talk of actual characters from the Warhammer universe being included and being captureable. This means that I could take my Chaos warlord and go beat the hell out of and take prisoner that little punk emperor who rapped my boys in the Albion summer campaign. Also, elves? Dwarves? Who gives a flying crap, I'm talkin about lizardmen, skaven, demons, squigs, gobbos, ogres, tombkings, amazons, beastmen, freakin real evil pointy eared freaks, FREAKIN CHAOS GODS REPRESENTED IN 3D GOODNESS HELLO!!! WoW was unoriginal and unimportant thankyou and goodnight...
I'll second that heh.
War40k would be about the only game that would make me unsubscribe from WAR, simply because I'm a bigger fan of 40k. I think it would be possible to make a 40k game. It would definitly have to be a MMOFPS though like WW2online. An ordinance server would be critical also. Something that CRS has neglected for a long time.
First of all, WoW is a game filled with nothing but grinding. There is very little in WoW that is actually fun -- oddly enough, the very little that is happens before level 10.
I can't say if WAR will be amazingly fun, but from what we've seen and read, it's looking awesome. I mean, being able to PvP for the entirety of my time in-game? I couldn't ask for anything more...
... and I don't have to ask, because I get tons more without doing so. =P
I can only hope the gameplay lives up to expectations to go with these great ideas.
Comments
Richard J. Cox
"There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust."
No.. Turbine just took a license that should have been MMO gold and made a piss-poor game with it. Almost as bad as $OE taking Star Wars and killing it.
You're just looking at it from a different perspective... You're right ofcourse that the D&D name alone is worth gold, but...
Personally i know i made the choice to ignore it completly cause of the 'wrong realm', in fact, i dont know anyone at all that plays D&D:online. I know alot of people who are D&D fans and also play MMO's, after it was clear that this was not Forgotten Realms nobody seemed to even be interested anymore...
And if anyone of them was, the crap you describe they made out of it exactly wouldn't make things better...
(I know one guy who tried it out, he didnt like it, but he didnt know anything about D&D anyway :P ...)
If you ask me, D&D is making a huge mistake by slowly killing off the old established Realms for the sake of one that's just a blend of the others...
"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth." - Henry Mencken
"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg
"And what would you do with a brain if you had one?" - Wizard of Oz
Yes, but Polls arent really all that reliable
What those polls tell me is rather that fantasy games are more likely to be sheit because companies are more likely to do a poor job on a fantasy game cause fantasy is what's most people hypotheticly feel secure with. :P
"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth." - Henry Mencken
"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg
"And what would you do with a brain if you had one?" - Wizard of Oz
But is it chicken or the egg?
Are Elflands more popular because they dominate the market, or do they dominate the market because they are what the people want?
Just look at WoW. Sure, it's themed in that genre, but its hugely popular because it is a well built game. Very few bugs, tons of content, very polished system. I can't think of how many times i played WoW and wished it was a speeder I was riding instead of a horse.
I'd even say that that poll is really telling of a great demand for sci-fi based games... because 5 of those poll topics ARE Sci-fi. When you combine them, Sci-Fi themed games would BEAT the fantasy category outright.
But tragically, Sci-fi games are less than 20% of the market share. Sure, STO, Tabula Rasa and Stargate are in the pipeline, with Shadowrun a possibility. Sci-Fi fans have so few MMO's to choose from right now... really only CoH and Eve if you're looking at working/growing games.
I just pray Warhammer blows the doors off the dump so hard that GW says "Hey, why not 40K?". And I'll pretend my Chaos Warrior has a chainsword.
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
haha, i completely agree with you, 40k would be a refreshing change in the mmo universe and it would just plain kick ass...i wonder though, will they be limiting the number of chaos players...obviously 75% of players will want to be chaos...and the remaining 25% will just be trying to prove a point :P.
On the other, fantasy just seems to be much more popular in general. Sci-fi games seem to be much more risky for MMORPGs. Look at everyone saying WAR40k should be an MMOFPS, as if sci-fi is a bad idea for a RPG
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
"Players can die just as well as NPC's"
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
than most other non-Fantasy MMOs. The success of Anarchy Online coupled with
the presence of other MMOs to come such as Auto Assault and as well as upcoming
ones like Tabula Rasa and the Star Trek MMO can be used to "justify"
why Sci-Fi can be used over Fantasy. Still, I agree that fantasy based ones are
the most popular ones especially now that fantasy has a tried and true formula
to them. The only reason WAR out of most other fantasy ones like Shayde already
said is because of the idea that it is Warhammer, an Intellectual Property that
is iconic in look and has a large fan following. Still, as it stands, Warhammer
Fantasy seems to enjoy an "easier" transition from the tabletop
medium to MMO, whereas we can talk in circles how WAR 40K could be fitted into
an MMO, since its a balance betweem honoring the IP and fitting it so it works
into the medium.
With Sci-Fi on the other hand you really have no idea... Take all the "popular" sci-fi settings out there and compare them to each other... Star Wars, Star Trek, BSG, Dune, 40k, Serenity, Stargate, etc... They're all vastly different... You don't necessarily know going in if you're dealing with 50 years into Earth's future or 50,000 years... You don't know if you have a single planet to deal with or an entire galaxy... Chances are you're not going to be familiar with the races in question... Then you toss in things like flight and lasers and mechs and an infinite possibility of other things based on technology, it can be a bit mind-boggling for some...
And on the flip side of that, BECAUSE there are so many possibilities, BECAUSE there is so much unexplored oppurtunites there, people go into Sci-Fi games with MUCH higher expectations than they would with a Fantasy game... And therefore are generally let down. It's like a double-edged sword, the same thing that scares people away from the Sci-Fi games is also what draws them to it... And when the game isn't up to par, is what causes them to leave... So I guess that is actually kinda a triple bladed sword... which is just kinda weird... So I'm gonna stop rambling now cause I have the feeling nothing I said here makes any sense...
Richard J. Cox
"There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust."
Can you get the Chaos designers to start working on that? Since I can't have my chainsword, that sounds like a hoot.
But back on topic, I can see where you are coming from, to a point. I think they haven't broken out the Sci-Fi games because they are afraid to invest the big-buckets-of-cash required to design one that goes against the elfish grain. Quite frankly, I think if Warhammer was not attached to this game, and it was just another fantasy mmo, nobody would care. Dark and Light had hype, D&D had hype, hell, Vanguard had hype... but really, do you think they'll make a dent in WoW? The first two barely blipped the radar.
I mean, how many fantasy MMO's have you seen pitched out there that went 'It's like EQ but you ride dragons" or "It's like WoW but with houses" or 'It's like EQ2 but interesting".
Too many in the BIZ look at games like WoW, and think the reason they're successful is because there's elves in it. There's elves in D&D and they didn't sell 100k units. The game's gotta be good. Just look at SWG's meltdown as an example. They SHOULD have had WoW's numbers, but their mismanagement and bugs destroyed the game.
Which is why I think Shadowrun would just KILL as an MMO, but I digress.
Tell the troops to keep up the good work. Blood for the Blood God and all.
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
Tell the troops to keep up the good work. Blood for the Blood God and all.
Actually when I'm working conventions and stuff I tend to start my pitches along the lines of "This is why it's NOT like <Game X> and here's why..."
And will do!
Richard J. Cox
"There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust."
Richard said it very well, which I guess is not surprising considering he's the Mythic community manager, lol.
Fantasy is the 'safe' bet, because it's a little more straightforward and easier to accept in the genre.
I know what he means by the mind-boggling of futuristic stuff, especially with WH40k. If you look at sci-fi one of the problems is determining what the skipped time means for the way things are.
I mean you can look at Back to the Future (Part 2), that's supposedly 2035. If you look at Star Trek, that's roughly 2200-2600 (if I remember correctly). Futurama is the year 3000, which is a thousand years, but still sorta within the grasp of the mind. But how do you represent 40,000 years in the future? That's a gulf of time that's pretty hard to wrap your mind around.
Hopefully WAR will come out and be as successful as we all hope it'll be, and then GW will say 'Okay, we've established that it can be done, greenlight 40k'.
The only thing that scares me about WAR now is the fact that EA bought Mythic. That makes me very very nervous for this game which I want to love. It's like hearing your girlfriend tell you that she might have an STD.
"Because it's easier to nitpick something than to be constructive." -roach5000
Richard J. Cox
"There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust."
A great many people are praying that that is the case
WAR will be better than WoW if they do it right.
This is becaus of numerous reasons.
1. I have been a warhammer fan for many years and I know as well as anyone that Warhammer has many things about it which are unique even in the Fantasy genre as a whole. Point originality.
2. GW has to approve everything and those kids see everything differently. The game will not only have PvP but it will envolve many P's cooperating to perform tasks which will outmanuever and cause the slaying of many other P's (actual functioning RvR). Seriously with GW I wouldnt be surprised is at some point the outcome of a battle is defined by who captures what point first and holds it (maybe its a crystal which will then fry opposing players). Plus if GW does this like they do everything they will have battles planned so everybody will be playing at such and such time and who ever doesnt represent is gonna have their village burned, their dog kicked, and their heads torn in twain!!!
3. Once again on the point of I'm a fan. Ive heard talk of actual characters from the Warhammer universe being included and being captureable. This means that I could take my Chaos warlord and go beat the hell out of and take prisoner that little punk emperor who rapped my boys in the Albion summer campaign. Also, elves? Dwarves? Who gives a flying crap, I'm talkin about lizardmen, skaven, demons, squigs, gobbos, ogres, tombkings, amazons, beastmen, freakin real evil pointy eared freaks, FREAKIN CHAOS GODS REPRESENTED IN 3D GOODNESS HELLO!!!
WoW was unoriginal and unimportant thankyou and goodnight...
FireFly and Serenity were awesome O.O
Best show/move ever!
I hope mythic or any other good company will do a 40k mmorp in the future (5-10 years). Though not sure if I still live then ;D
Dodgy? As a negative? Warcraft is nothing more than Warhammer-lite. Both have the same creation story, the same metaphysics, and similar themes (no absolute good and evil). Warcraft just has an infinitely shallower take on the whole deal.
Warcraft "lore" feels like a comic book or anime. Every few years there's a New Menace to Everything That Must Be Stopped. First, orcs from another world. Then it turns out these orcs were duped by Chaos (or... Chaos-lite, from their warp-lite), so they can be good guys (Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch OLOLOL!!!11), because there's an EVILER EVIL that Must Be Stopped If It's The Last Thing We Do. Oh, and they have Elric/Aenarion/Vader on their side. Who's tragic, by the way. Really. Then, that's finished up and it moves on to Bug People.
It's the same villian-of-the-season format that Yu-gi-oh! follows: building up to the next "OMG BIG REVEAL!!!11" but there's not a lot of substance.
Warhammer, on the other hand, follows the form of a history class. Like a book that combines a hybrid of Moorcock's Chaos with Lovecraft, then sticks that in 16th century pre/early-Reformation Germany. It's convoluted, contradictory, thouroughly fascinating, and it doesn't change (much); just like real-life history. It borrows from original sources and finds depth there. There's always more detail to be discovered, new revelations, and established things to debate.
For me, the psuedo-historical/classic swords-and-sorcery style of Warhammer is infinitely more engaging than a lighter, fluffier version. It's like a steak compared to a hamburger, or triple-fermented unfiltered belgian compared to Budweiser. Classic versus mass-market.
We'll see if they pull off the PvP, but when it comes to story, imagery, and graphics, Warhammer is leagues ahead.
err i had to add it,,
Now an MMO version of Necromunda or Inquisitor. That would be amazing.
Persona,lly i aam a little concerned about this game because it seems a lot of the P.R for this game so far is that its Warhammer based.
Dont get me wrong tho i love warhammer its just that World of Warcraft played to its name too and it turned out to a pretty generick game with no real inovation. My question is will Warhammer be another ginerick fantasy mmo with a warhammer flavour or will it be a warhammer fantasy game with some inovative features in it.
And remember when WoW was at beta a lot of additional stuff was promissed back then that didnt make it into the game. Just like there is a lot of stuff in Warhammer that is promissed for when the game goes retail.
Makes tyou think dont it
i DID wait a long time for WoW, but i dont really recall what the promises actual were.. can you enlighten me? :P
my reason to start playing wow, was because of the thrilling experince of adventuring with other players in a large world - nothing else(which basically was the normal thing in every single MMO in the entire world).
and if i remember, that was the only promise they made.
while WAR made some more direct promises: lots of pvp(already stated, city sieging), skills over gear(which, after 1 year of WoW, is the one thing i need), plenty of costumization for your characters.
War40k would be about the only game that would make me unsubscribe from WAR, simply because I'm a bigger fan of 40k.
I think it would be possible to make a 40k game. It would definitly have to be a MMOFPS though like WW2online. An ordinance server would be critical also. Something that CRS has neglected for a long time.
First of all, WoW is a game filled with nothing but grinding. There is very little in WoW that is actually fun -- oddly enough, the very little that is happens before level 10.
I can't say if WAR will be amazingly fun, but from what we've seen and read, it's looking awesome. I mean, being able to PvP for the entirety of my time in-game? I couldn't ask for anything more...
... and I don't have to ask, because I get tons more without doing so. =P
I can only hope the gameplay lives up to expectations to go with these great ideas.