Posts Tagged ‘new’

One Instance to Rule Them All

1 November 2007 | No Comments » | LHStaff

I’m sure most of you will agree that todays MMORPG are not exactly what you first imagined when you first heard of MMO games. What do you mean I have to pick a server? We all don’t play in the same virtual world? I know I sure didn’t. I had the fantasy that hundreds of thousands, millions even, of players were all playing in 1 virtual world and not split up between dozens of separate servers. What a let down when I finally learned the awful truth.

So whats stopping todays MMO from creating 1 massive virtual world where everyone plays together? I mean Second Life is doing it.

“Second Life is simulated on a large array of Debian servers, referred to as the Grid. The world is divided into 256×256 m areas of land, called Regions. Each Region is simulated by a single named server instance” Src: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life

Even though your going from instance to instance your still in the main world and still connected to everyone else. If you want to meet with someone, regarding where you are, you can still meet up. The same cannot be said for basically every other MMO out there. (Please correct me if I’m wrong)

So whats the problem? To start there are some technical as well as game play issues that would have to be over come.

Bandwidth
Any MMO gamer will tell you as soon as you enter a large populated city everything goes to hell. Its happened to every single MMORPG I’ve ever played. So what can be done? Well I’m not a network engineer or anything, but it can be simply that the amount of bandwidth that is needed is not possible to obtain on cable or DSL. Perhaps more servers spread out over a larger network. As I said I’m not sure what the solution would be, I just know its not possible with todays technology.

Processing Power
With any MMO, the most taxing part on the CPU is the combat. The servers need to calculate thousands of factors within a spit second, so if you have just 1 gaming world and it just happens that you have an extreme amount of players in one area, going by Seconds Life server configuration, it would crash that server. Each area (instance) in Second Life is tied to one server, so if you have too many players in the instance there is no way that server could do the calculations needed for combat. You would have to setup some of limit so you can’t have more than X amount of people in the instance at one time. But doing that wouldn’t make a true virtual world. Imagine trying to go to NYC and being stopped by a cop and told “Sorry we have reach our limit for this area, you will need to wait until someone leaves”

Quests
If you managed to get beyond the technical issues with having 1 virtual world, the next problem would be how to do quests. You certainly can’t have 10,000 people doing the same quest at the same time. And if you decide to create separate instances for quests, well than again your not in a true virtual world. MMOs would have to create a totally new style of game play that do not rely on quests cause they just won’t work.

Battles
How would battles be fought? If you can have a raid of thousand, ten thousand or even a hundred thousand users, how can you possibly setup battles. Again, the whole idea of combat would have to be reinvented.

Even with all these issues to overcome I’m sure sooner or later someone will do it and it, I just don’t think it will be done anytime soon.

Edit: I have just been informed that Eve Online is setup as one main virtual world or galaxy if you will. At its peak hitting 32,955 users logged in on Dec 3rd, 2006 Src: http://www.eve-online.com/news/newsOfEve.asp?newsID=385

Turbine to Users: "We own your CC information"

31 October 2007 | No Comments » | LHStaff

As I had mentioned earlier on this blog, I have recently stopped playing LOTRO. So today I went and officially canceled my account, however while doing so I saw no option to remove my CC and billing information from their system. Having been a victim of random charges by unsaid company in the past I wanted to remove my info so that my subscription would not accidentally be restarted. Seeing no way to do this from Turbines website, I contacted support, who basically said,

You either keep your CC information in our system or the game that you PAID for will no longer work, ever.

At first I was confused, so I asked him to explain and sure enough he confirmed what I had thought. The full transcript of our chat is in the image to the left.

Now there are 2 things wrong with this policy.

1) You are treating your users as criminals. This is inline with what the video game, music and movie industry have now been doing for years. Treating customers like criminals in a desperate attempt to prevent data from being copied or in this case sold to another user.

2) You are holding my CC information as hostage. If I cancel I can never play the game again without going and purchasing a new copy and if I don’t my CC information stays in your system. As any gamer will tell you, there comes a time when perhaps you wish to replay a certain game and should be able to. You did PAY for it. I’ve done this with dozes of games, Starcraft being the last as I got nostalgic when talk of SCII started.

What Turbine is doing is completely unacceptable. If I decided in a year to start playing again I have every right to without leaving my CC information in there system for said year. After all I might never decide I want to play again and my CC info will remain there forever since most likely I would have forgotten by then.

In the transcript above you will notice that a Supervisor was going to call me. He did, about 10 mins after the chat to my surprise, however my phone was on vibrate and on my bed so I didn’t hear it. I did reply to the ticket opened by the Supervisor and receive a reply that basically said the same things as the support rep. However he did add some more info.

- If you remove your CC information your account will be permanently disabled INCLUDING any days remaining on your account. Again there logic is beyond me.
- Trying to replace your CC info with a Game card will not work, since you have to remove your info first, your account will become dead.

So basically once you enter your CC info Turbine gets to keep it or they take away your game, WITHOUT refund. Whats next for the gaming industry? monitoring the number of installs? Oh wait there already doing that too!

Is MMO Housing Important?

31 October 2007 | 14 Comments » | LHStaff

A lot of MMORPGs these days have begun to implement a lot of new ideas and gameplay aspects that promises to draw in millions of players and keep them happy for years and years. Sometimes these things are pvp related, sometimes they are pve related. One thing, however, that always seems to get left out is player housing.

In today’s MMORPGs player housing is a very important aspect. There is no doubt that players enjoy having their own personal space and area to “live in” with their character. So why haven’t popular MMORPGs, like World of Warcraft, implemented them yet? Certainly the inhabitants of WoW would enjoy their own space to call their own.

Recently, with their latest update, Turbine decided to add player and “guild” housing into their popular Lord of the Rings Online game with much fanfair. Each race has its own neighborhoods that contain 30 or so houses ranging from guild houses, delux houses, and standard houses. Depending on the view, size, and landscape around the house determines the size and upkeep. Each week, in order to keep your house, you will have to lay down a certian amount of cash.

Bottomline, player housing is fast becoming an important aspect of the MMORPG community. It is a way for you to customize your existence within that community. There is a reason why sites such as MySpace and Facebook are so popular, and one of those reasons is the ability to make your profile your own. A place you can call your virtual home. These things are not fads, and as more and more MMORPGs get developed the players are gonna start taking note which ones have and do not have (I’m looking at you Tabula Rasa) player housing.

BioWare + LucasArts = ?

30 October 2007 | No Comments » | LHStaff

Some very interesting news cropped up today telling us all that LucasArts and BioWare have teamed up, yet again, on an unannounced project. It was a very interesting read and one that hinted at a lot of possibilities for the duo. Naturally, I won’t bother restating what has already been said in the press release (you can read that here). What we will discuss here is what exactly this could mean.

BioWare has been developing an MMORPG for a while now, it’s no secret. What is a secret is what exactly their MMORPG is based on. Naturally the gamers of the world have united in an attempt to convince them to make one based off their hit-RPG, Knights of the Old Republic. This notion was, obviously, fueled earlier today by this press release. Now I hate to burst bubbles, I really do, but we have to look at this scenario logically. As much as I’d love an MMORPG based off of KotOR, I just do not see it happening, and here’s why:

  1. LucasArts and Sony Online Entertainment still have a contract that allows for Sony to develop the Star Wars MMO property. I don’t see Sony quietly backing out of this and allowing more competition into their very small arena. A BioWare Star Wars MMO would kill their property.
  2. [Quoted from the LucasArts/BioWare press release today]“BioWare’s mission is to deliver the best story and character-driven games in the world, delivering powerful emotional experiences to our fans.” No MMORPG, ever, has character-driven games. It is, with our current technology, impossible. MMORPGs are world-driven, not character driven.
  3. The press release is announcing a new partnership, not one that has been working on an unannounced title since 2006 (when they announced they were beginning development on an MMORPG).
  4. Why would they announce the partnership but not the game? If this really was about them making a Star Wars MMORPG then they would have announced it along with this deal. Everybody is already assuming that this means the Star Wars MMO is coming. BioWare knows this, and LucasArts knows this which is why they kept their game a secret because with everybody assuming its an MMORPG they don’t have to worry about their new IP being leaked to the public.

I understand that this is all circumstantial evidence, but these things need to be brought up. This deal in no way signifies that their will be a BioWare Star Wars MMORPG. I very much hope I am wrong, but as of right now I believe they may be working on a completely separate game altogether. LucasArts has many, many other IPs including Indiana Jones. There is a good chance BioWare is asking to be a part of one of those franchises.

Hellgate: London MMORPG?

29 October 2007 | No Comments » | LHStaff

Hellgate: London seems to be a pretty typical MMORPG when you look at the game and world. It has all the same elements of an MMORPG like quests, ability to play online, different armor, stats, levels, a number bar for your skills and spells. All very typical of your everyday MMORPG, but does that make Hellgate: London an MMORPG?

As somebody who loves MMORPGs, I tend to travel around the forums a lot. On these forums it gets brought up a lot. Somebody will say something like how they can’t wait for the “new MMORPG Hellgate: London to come out,” and then a forum fight will ensue between the MMORPG purists (people who maintain the strict definition behind the acronym MMORPG) and the others (people who generally just use the acronym to define any online game). It has actually become quite interesting as people struggle between keeping the acronym a strict set of standards to define an MMORPG, and allowing it to become just a word to describe a genre of video games.

So, back to my original question: is Hellgate: London an MMORPG? Well, let’s look at why some would not call it an MMORPG:

  1. The game is completely zoned. Even the safe zones in the game can only hold 50 or so people.
  2. There is no persistent world where thousands of people can inhabit the land together.
  3. There is a single-player component, an MMORPG no-no.

All legitimate reasons as to why it could not, technically, be called an MMORPG. However, in this day an age I’d still say it is, simply because the term is fast becoming an industry genre that is being applied to what can only be called a “baby boom” of MMORPG games. Its too complicated to come up with genres for each and every differing title and the term MMORPG seems to be broad enough to give people a rough idea of what your game will look like and be, which is what a genre is supposed to do anyways. Bottom line, games need genres, and it just so happens the moniker MMORPG has been adapted to define these new not-quite-MMORPG games.