should shut down mmorpg be made freeware

hercules · January 2008

I think unlike other games ,mmorpg are a commitment and also unlike other games when support ends you can still play them ,with mmorpg this is not the case.

I recall i played TA a long time after the company that made it went under and did not support it.I played it until i upgraded to windows xp and could not anymore because xp did not support it.

With auto assault,AC2 and other shutdown mmorpg it was not the case.It shutdown and thats that.Some might have commited years of $$$ and time and lost it without much of a compensation if any at all.

Maybe they should at least release the coding to community and let them run free servers even if they are crappy,unreliable and slow but at least they work and people can continue playing.

ianubisi · January 2008

They should, but they won't.

VideoJockey · January 2008

There was a big push from Earth & Beyond players to buy the rights to the game from EA when it shut down... I think they had secured something like $15,000 for the cause, but EA wouldn't sell. There were thousands of players who wanted to continue to play, myself among them.

I'm no marketing specialist, but my guess is that dead games stay dead because people playing free games are less likely to have a subscription to an active game.

hercules · January 2008

Originally posted by VideoJockey

There was a big push from Earth & Beyond players to buy the rights to the game from EA when it shut down... I think they had secured something like $15,000 for the cause, but EA wouldn't sell. There were thousands of players who wanted to continue to play, myself among them.
I'm no marketing specialist, but my guess is that dead games stay dead because people playing free games are less likely to have a subscription to an active game.

you have a good point.

TBH this is one thing i think SoE did right.They made an all access fee and this helps keep games that would otherwise be closed like matrix online alive.

Considering NCsoft has many mmorpg such as lineage 1 & 2 ,CoH etc they could have kept AA alive with an all access package.

Same goes for turbine who has 3 other living mmorpg with AC2 and ofc EA has DAoC ,sims online and UO which they could have bundled E&B with

Neox · January 2008

I know of one game that has survived this way, redmoon online now labeled redmoon online classic.

A game that I would have liked to have went this way wasnt even around long enough to have gotten a foot hold in the gaming comunity because it was shut down 8 hours after it went into beta called Dream, pretty much the greatest game that never was.

Suo_Eno_1357 · January 2008

If I recall correctly, there was this 1 particularly forward attempt by the group VCA (Virtual Citizenship Association) to buy out Ryzom at late 2006 when its IP owner were on the brink of bankruptcy. Needless to say, it wasn't successful and another company (obviously more organized and with much much ample resources) had beaten them to the finish line. But the point is, VCA's objectives had made considerable public impact and had contributed to raise the awareness that failed or stunted MMOs can (or should) in fact be open for interested parties in public for continuity. Of course realistically, the lines aren't as clear as how we all would prefer it to be as outlined by Raph Koster in a not so old blog post of his.

Personally some of his viewpoints were a bit crude as in some were as redundant as all are already the norm in the mainstream business (where he touched on RMT and grey shards' concerns) for years before VCA's attempts till now.

Neox · January 2008

Wasnt there a group that took a microsoft spaceflight sim game and saved it?

bonespirit · February 2008

Who cares?

New games coming up every month/year

Beatnik59 · February 2008

I think such a thing would go a long way at boosting consumer confidence in the genre as a whole. One of the reasons I was skeptical at this genre for awhile is the question of "how many months will I have before the service closes down and my software becomes useless?"

Part of the reason I think Blizzard did so well is because they've maintained Battle.net for so long, that people know that WoW wouldn't fold if they didn't pull their quota for a quarter.

FreddyNoNose · February 2008

So if I don't support a game, I might get to play it for free?

Classicstar · February 2008

But with ac2 there should be a exception, turbine have solen from there loyal community there crooks.

At least they should have made ac2 free to play becouse they let there loyal community buy expansion for ac2 and 2 months later they announce to shutdown ac2.

Turbine are criminals and should be punished for that.

Suo_Eno_1357 · February 2008

@forest-nl

It's exactly the ideal (sorry but ironically it is for this subject) situation as what AC2 had gone through that should have sparked this same topic for some more other titles. But to me though, don't you think that Turbine should have put up a public repository for the more technically astute AC's avid fans to work on before any attempts to make it go live again? Public test servers (just 1 is enough for the purpose) can be put up and as a show of good faith, they can at least spare some hardware + network + staffs' components.

One can only dream though.

M1sf1t · February 2008

That decision is up to the IP holders and/or those who financially invested in the development of any ex-MMORPG. Believe it or not there are tons of legal issues that would hamper the public releasing of a MMO to be freely edited and modded by the public. Even the tools used to maintain and develop content are not free of IP legalities for most MMO's let alone the game content itself.

M1sf1t · February 2008

Originally posted by VideoJockey
There was a big push from Earth & Beyond players to buy the rights to the game from EA when it shut down... I think they had secured something like $15,000 for the cause, but EA wouldn't sell. There were thousands of players who wanted to continue to play, myself among them.
I'm no marketing specialist, but my guess is that dead games stay dead because people playing free games are less likely to have a subscription to an active game.

$15,000 dollars is a joke compared to the amount of money spent developing a MMO. EA like any game company wants to be properly compensated for it's efforts in development of the original game if it's going to hand over the IP rights to anyone. Fifth-teen thousand dollars wouldn't even cover the salary of the janitor that swept up the place where E&B was developed.

GoldGunNoDow · February 2008

Haha,you should feel happiness.Look at chinese mmorpgs shut down:

1,ECO COO miss.player unknow it,and game continu paid.

2,Suddenly,most staff dismissed,company close,game sever shut down.

3,Angry players noisy,and all game madio report it.

4,At last,reparation is nothing.

bobfish · February 2008

AC2 could never be freeware because the source code and engine is the original version of the engine now used to power Dungeons and Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online. The security issues of that code getting into the hands of everyone is enough for them to never release it or sell it on to another company.

Many MMOs out there that went under were purchased and setup again by another company if they thought they could turn a profit on them, so for those than remain cancelled, either the figures will never add up or the company has another reason like Turbine do, for not letting anyone else have the game files.

Suo_Eno_1357 · February 2008

@GoldGunNoDow

As your sig had aptly put it, it took me 3 swipes to finally make sense of what you've typed. Still... I don't see any differences on the ramifications you've listed whether if any affected MMOs in this discussion were from either Chinese, Korean, Japanese or Western bases.

bobfish · February 2008

Originally posted by GoldGunNoDow

Haha,you should feel happiness.Look at chinese mmorpgs shut down:
1,ECO COO miss.player unknow it,and game continu paid.
2,Suddenly,most staff dismissed,company close,game sever shut down.
3,Angry players noisy,and all game madio report it.
4,At last,reparation is nothing.

No sympathy for them, those MMOs were shut down for BREAKING THE LAW!

Corrupt corporations will never get any sympathy from anyone here.

Kyleran · February 2008

Originally posted by M1sf1t

That decision is up to the IP holders and/or those who financially invested in the development of any ex-MMORPG. Believe it or not there are tons of legal issues that would hamper the public releasing of a MMO to be freely edited and modded by the public. Even the tools used to maintain and develop content are not free of IP legalities for most MMO's let alone the game content itself.

This is a good point. MMO's probably always license some sort of code, drivers etc from other vendors, and the feels for those licenses probably stop shortly after the game is shut down. Were they to sell the base game code someone would be responsible of the new license fees.

Also, as someone mentioned, if we all played free games, we wouldn't need to buy EA and NCSofts new title's. I can see where they would have a problem with that.

Arudanel · February 2008

Also the issue of Middleware being so heavily used now. PhysX, Speedtree, etc all have their own legal issues, as to why they couldn't ever be given away. And then, as others have said, since alot of engines are re-used, the hacking risks of releasing their server code to the public... I don't even want to think about this scenario. Not good. Way I see it, is that the money you pay is a lease on the software, nothing more. I really see no issue with this, as most games that are old I no longer even look at. It would be nice for E&B to open it's doors again, or even Motor City Online. But it won't happen, any more than a Pre-NGE server. Why would a company provide competition for iself, at no charge?

Unknown · February 2008

Pretty sure that Tabula Rasa uses the Auto Assault engine. Also I suspect JumpGate evolution will use at least part of it, since NetDevil makes Jumpgate.

So often it is the case that making something freeware is a bad idea. Especially given the problems with the GPL. Not that they have to use GPL.

nomadian · February 2008

well it would be good to play what you've bought in some form, even if it were offline. Any other game you can do that once you've bought it.

ladyattis · February 2008

Originally posted by Arudanel
Also the issue of Middleware being so heavily used now. PhysX, Speedtree, etc all have their own legal issues, as to why they couldn't ever be given away.

That's why I don't believe in IP, it's a moral violation of the absolute right of property (which is your hardware and what not). IP is a security, not a right. Either it's introduced within the hardware or within the society through statute, but in itself it has no moral basis.

-- Brede

Anofalye · February 2008

This decision belong to the owner.

I would do that myself, but I am not exactly rich or successfull in life...so I do understand peoples having other concerns.

komarr · February 2008

While some companies have made their games into freeware after failing at pay to play or instead of pay to play, the word freeware is decieving. No company puts their game out there for free. Somehow someway they are making money on their game. Whether it's from fees, advertising in game or on site, or cash shops, they are making (hopefully) enough money to pay for staff and equipmentand server fees.

Einherjar_LC · February 2008

While I'll agree it would be nice especially for a game you've spent much time in, it isn't feasible.

Companies usually shut down games because subscriptions do not meet minimum operating costs. Making it F2P just makes it worse.

Even if the company quits supporting the game with updates, bug fixes, etc, they still have to support it in some way to keep it running which means it can't be free. You have bandwidth, electricity, server maint, and they will possibly have to maintain a couple people for customer support.

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should shut down mmorpg be made freeware

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Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV