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General: Expanding Our Reach
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Yesterday we asked our readers what they thought about adding Diablo 3 to the MMORPG.com Games List. In a new column, Managing Editor Bill Murphy talks a bit why we asked and about ways we're working hard to make MMORPG.com a place for players to find information about all of the games they care about, whether it's a traditional MMORPG or an MMOFPS or an action-online RPG. Check out "Expanding Our Reach" and then let us know your thoughts.
I’m not writing this to be controversial. I just want all of you to understand where we’re coming from. If you look at a game like Vindictus or Guild Wars, or even Dragon Nest… they’re online, they’re RPGs of a sort, and they have thousands of players. But they’re not quite MMORPGs. Yet they’re listed on this site. The reasoning is simply this: They’re close enough that we know our readers care about them. In the future, you’re probably going to see more and more MMO off-shoots added to this site. It’s already happened with MOBAs like League of Legends. Depending on yesterday’s poll, it may happen with Diablo 3. It will continue to happen as more and more games blur the line between MMO and RPG, and genres continue to blend and merge and create new sub-genres.
Read Bill Murphy's Expanding Our Reach.
Comments
I think it's a good stance you're taking. You are correct in that the times have changed, and that the line between what is and isn't an MMORPG isn't clear.
As long as you organize it in a way where people can come here and either look at all the games, or just the MMORPG types they want to, then it's totally fine I say.
Good move
"Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted.
Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world."
Hans Margolius
i agree. the genre has and is changing. and if it has any health it will continue to do so. the only things that dont grow or change are dead or rocks.
you might consider the future possibility of spinning off another site, as you have with rtsguru, except with a pure focus on what has classically been considered an mmorpg, with an emphasis on each letter in that. but thats only if the genre spreads out too thin for one site to manage.
otherwise, keep up the good work. i think you all have made the right choice and im glad you're taking each game on a case by case basis.
"There are at least two kinds of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."
Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse
"Our Game List will have a field added for genre to include things like Action MMO, MMOFPS, MMORTS, MOBA, CORPG and so forth. We’ll comb through and adjust titles like Guild Wars, Vindictus to reflect this change over time."
This is a good move. That's all I need, to be able to easily skip over what Im not interested in.
Thanks.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
A comment from myself from the D3 thread. I really believe using a color code (for the rings around the logo) in the news section as such would be user friendlier.
EDIT: Also noted that your guys already own the domain MORPG.com. Why not simply change the whole design and focus to this domain instead of MMORPG.com. This would give the user a better indication of what to expect, or create a new site here with focuses on non-massive multiplayer games.
The genre is chaning, that's true. And it's good from you to change accordingly. I just hope you won't spread yourself too thin and that the coverage keeps it's quality.
ways to expend:
1= add a bunch of row or watchemacallit for chowing if the game is regional ,wich region,global wich area,international wich region
why?cause some game say internaional but often exclude asia ,and we all know some game are full global without restriction
but with a big list like you have it is hard to know .i saw a site doing a flag thing but in those even with it some game are also regional.so they often exclude (ipblocked if your from usa and aint using say mandarin)china,korea etc
ty
I think Bill wrote this article to be controversial.
Just sayin'
Well, I voted for Diablo 3 - because I'm a fan of the genre. A selfish vote.
However, including standard RPGs would cause unneeded confusion.
I come to this website for the MMO news. I like that everything I see is in regards to MMOs. If I to sift through to discern RPG from MMO, then the simplicity has been removed. I'll honestly probably start looking for a different site that offers nothing but MMO news.
Quantifying MMOs and quasi-MMOs into subcategories under MMOs is a good thing.
That said, I still don't believe that Diablo 3 fits anywhere within that umbrella. It's an on-line coop action-RPG... which still isn't an MMO.
If it and games like it are going to be added to this site, they should be put in a completely separate section from the games that actually fall somewhere within the MMO spectrum, and news for such shouldn't clutter the main section for MMOs.
just make the games list sortable so I can weed out the diablo clones and I'll be fine with it.
I think it's a needed and useful move. Like you say the MMO genre has changed, as has the world of online games. There's so many games that border on MMOs now that to ignore these would be to the detriment of the site. At least I think so. It was through this site that I learned of the MOBA genre, or more specifically Neverwinter, a game that definitely piqued my interest.
This broadening of the genre is one of the best things that could have happened to MMOs, and for this site to miss out on that would be damaging.
Not to mention that I like it here, and I want to see all these new branches of the genre at my favourite site.
.
Sounds good to me.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
just do it quickly , maybe it won't hurt as much
Considering the last couple of years worth of new releases in the "MMORPG" category I can certainly see why you'd want to branch out and cover games that aren't traditional "MMORPGs". At least then you'd be able to cover some interesting games that are made with a fitting amount of content (the majority of themeparks games aren't) and get some variety of games to talk about (themajority of MMORPGs are thempark).
I'll be playing Diablo 3 (though admittedly I probably won't refrence this site for news because as you mentioned it won't really cover the game). What I do look forward to seeing as far as non-traditional "MMORPG" coverage is that of Wargaming.net's World of Warplanes. Already enjoying World of Tanks and looking forward to dogfighting!
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
Can we vote on adding non-online rpgs to the lists?
You want to add games to the site that your original mmorpgers can relate to and also find enjoyable.
I think it would be pretty bad ass to talk about games like Skyrim & Mass Effect on here since we all play those games.
I would hate if we only included games with online options.
Playing: Nothing
Looking forward to: Nothing
Actually it would be nice to have an overall list of games that has more categorization options. If the current list would get cleaned up in the process that would be even better. Here's the kind of list I'd like to be able to generate from a master list:
Equipment: PC (or Xbox, or Android, or Apple)
Online? Yes
Multiplayer? Yes
Meetup Areas: World (or Lobby, or Cities)
Character Persistent? Yes
Housing? Yes
Crafting? Yes
I'm sure others would like to know stuff such as Payment Model, PVP, and Setting (fantasy, space, etc.)
Basically as long as I have some way to filter out what I consider noise and not interesting I don't really care what gets covered. One caution though is that the year coming up is promising to be a very busy year MMO wise and you don't want to dilute that coverage.
I can already see I'm in the minority here when it comes to this but in the end this isn't my website, I'm just a guy who visits daily or multiple times a day. The success doesn't really hinge on me so I can see why you'd want to integrate a almost guranteed popular game like Diablo3 and I think that's why you integrated an already popular game like LoL.
But, I'm not for integrating games like Diablo 3, and I will admit I was way more against adding LoL to the list because I felt it would have fit better on your RTSguru site. As far as Diablo 3 is concerned you can't exactly cover it anywhere else but here.
I can see why Diablo 3 can be a fence rider but the only reason it's on the fence is because Guild Wars moved that fence a few years back. It used to be that in order to be an MMO it had to have a persistant world (any many agreed at the time) then guild wars came out. In all honesty the only thing different about Guild Wars and Diablo 2 was the fact that instead of a menu lobby you had a lobby where you can run around with your character and see and talk to other characters. Which at the time it was so close that I was for moving the fence and calling Guild Wars and MMORPG but mostly because it had the feel.
At this time though I think if we continue to move the line of what is an MMORGP or what is not an MMORPG, before we know it anything that can be played online will be on this site and it won't be about MMORPGs anymore, it will just be another online gaming site, which we have plenty of.
I come here because I love MMOs, I can't think of a site that is dedicated to the genre enough to get me to visit it daily and I just worry that could change and I won't have a fun place to hangout when I'm bored at work or want to argue with intelligent people about what is or is not an MMORPG.
I'd like to be able to filter the news by game genre please.
I think you should be dedicated to one specific type of game per site. You started the fpsguru and rts guru and mobileguru no problem. Continue to sgregate games, otherwise it will turn into a nightmare.
I struggle not with life, money, emotions, and world, but against old mindsets and selves to be proven obsolete in a age and time of rapid changes. Go create fun, so you can have fun.
Thinking outside the MMO box is a very good move.
One of the important things this site can do is help identify what a game is trying to be. A lot of complicated things are happening in the industry and one of the dangers I see is a risk of consumers having a harder time penetrating the wall of marketing to locate the experience they are looking for or finding the experience they didn't know existed.
I'd love to see more compare-and-contrast type articles - focus on one aspect of a game and explore how different games approach the issue, or line up two games side by side for those who haven't played them both and explain where they are similar and where they are different without trying to judge which is better.
I still feel that it would be better for both yourselves and your readers if you just launched a RPGguru website seperate from this one. This would give you a home for all non-MMO-RPGs and would give you the freedom to cover whatever you want without feeling it necessary to ask our permission first. I feel so strongly about this I actually started a thread with a Poll in it on this very subject in the 'Site Suggestions' section here at MMORPG.com. Whether you are for or against this suggestion you should go and at least vote to let them know if you feel a seperate RPG website is a good idea or not.
Bren
while(horse==dead)
{
beat();
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I would agree if those Guru sites weren't completel failures...
Have you visited RTS or FPS Guru?
I put a post up almost two days ago and its still up on the Fps forum recent list....
No one goes there if anything they should kill those sites and combine them with mmorpg.com and make a gaming super site.
Playing: Nothing
Looking forward to: Nothing
I see nothing wrong with adding a select few games like Diablo 3, Torchlight 2 and Skyrim, since most of us, as you say, will be playing them anyway. As long as the site doesn't lose the main focus. I was just looking at the site logo and thinking how the concept fits it, you have the RPG off to one side, the MM on the other and the O for online as the central focus.
As long as these games have an online component (have to be played online, or can be modded using online tools) and can fit on on either the MM (massively multiplayer - MOBAs, and the like) or on the RPG side (hello Skyrim), then I think it's all good.
Plus I always like to hear what people have to say here about SPGs...so there's a selfish element to it as well. We already have the general gaming forum, seems a no-brainer to allow some of that to come more to the fore.