Posts Tagged ‘Planetside’

MMO Resell: Why Not?

18 April 2008 | No Comments » | LHStaff

One of the most profitable businesses in the video games industry today is not a developer, designer, publisher, or even console manufacturer. Not to say all of the aforementioned are unsuccessful, but certainly they have not yet achieved the same kind of success as this one. In today’s video gaming world, GameStop reigns supreme as the most successful video game retailer in the world.

You’d think, by looking at the store from outside, that selling the new games is where they get all their money. You’d be wrong. The main reason for GameStop’s profitability lies in its business to buy and resell used games. It’s an incredibly profitably business and one that GameStop has mastered. Unfortunately, there are still games that consumers are unable to sell: MMORPGs.

When you are done with that shiny new Xbox 360, or PS3 game what do you typically do with it? Well, if your anything like me, you start shopping around to trade it in towards your next victim purchase. This can be done with a few PC games as well (provided they don’t have any pesky online copy right protection). Unfortunately, you can’t do the same with your ever growing MMORPG collection. Due to having an account linked to the actual disc it makes it virtually impossible to sell the actual disc when you do finally get bored of the game. A shady practice by the MMO gaming industry, but one that is quite often overlooked.

So why is this even happening? After all, developers and publishers allow you to sell console games. The music industry allows you to sell your long forgotten CDs. Even the movie industry allows you to sell movies to your friends. This is all a common practice amongst out economy and it’s something that these organizations know is happening.

Well, to be honest, I can’t even begin to tell you what the motivation for each company might be. Some people claim that the CD can’t be used for another account to keep thefts in line. After all, if your account is automatically linked to the CD then selling it could cause your account to be opened up for theft. However, the whole problem would be avoided if your account was never linked in the first place. Perhaps there is a missing piece in the equation that I can’t see, but from my perspective the entire thing wreaks of greed.

Thoughts? Comments? Flames? Let’a rip!

4 MMORPGs That Should Have Been Great

15 April 2008 | No Comments » | LHStaff

Starwars Galaxies

Probably the biggest disappointment in MMORPG history. The Starwars universe just screams MMORPG, how can you possible mess up a game like this. Well we all got the answer when the game was released on June 20, 2003. No Jedis, no space combat and boring quests. Seriously, are you sure this is based on Starwars? It would be 7 MONTHS before the first player unlocked the Jedi class and another 9 months for the first expansion, Jump to Lightspeed, allowed players to finally jump into the pilots seat of an X-wing or TIE fighter. Future changes to the combat system and a reduction of playable professions would completely lay waste to what was so far a decent game. However there is no arguing that even it you consider Starwars Galaxies a good game, it should no doubt have been one of the best MMORPG of all time.

Matrix Online

What can I say about the Matrix Online, another franchise that should feel right at home being a MMORPG. However when The Matrix Online launched it seems Agent Smith was wreaking havoc because the game was extremely buggy. Reports of crashes, random disconnects, being stuck in walls and falling through the world are just a few. Aside from the bugs the missions were painfully repetitive. Go here, find something or someone, perhaps kill them, come back. Rinse and repeat. To make things worse all the buildings looked similar and were very boring to explore. However the biggest disappoint was that you don’t actually fight the machines or agents. Seriously that’s like Starwars with no Jedis, oh wait. :?

Planetside

This is one game that definitely did not reach its full potential. Hundreds of players in a FPS fragging each other for territory with a crap load of weapons and vehicles to choose from, whats not to like. Unfortunately this game wouldn’t be on this list if there wasn’t anything wrong with it. Planetside’s problem was that the terrain was boring, all the bases looked the same and no one ever won. It was just a three way tug-o-war battle that would rage on forever. Future expansions added new mech vehicles that altered the games balance and not in a good way. Planetside unfortunately never recovered and is a dying game. Perhaps the upcoming Huxley or Earthrise can fulfil all our MMOFPS desires.

Dungeons & Dragons Online

For many D&D fans, this was the MMORPG they were waiting for, too bad for them it was just an average game. D&D Online concentrated on group play, the problem with that is many players that were looking to solo couldn’t and unless you were in a large guild or had a lot of online friends you would spend almost as much time looking for groups as you would playing. Lack of content and repeating quests is also a major issue. It doesn’t matter how good the dungeons look, after a dozen times your going to get bored. Speaking about dungeons I think they should have called the game Dungeons & More Dungeons Online.

Ubisoft Accounces Tom Clancy MMO

26 March 2008 | No Comments » | LHStaff

Ubisoft acquired full rights to the Tom Clancy name a few days ago for a reported 90 million dollars and has now announced a Tom Clancy MMO. Development on this new project has not yet started, but speculation is already putting the budget for this game at around 50 million.

It truly seems that the MMO rush is on and everyone wants a piece of the action. No doubt a Tom Clancy MMO would be a FPS, although I don’t know how you can take a spy/swat type gameplay and turn it into a MMO. How does that work? 50 spies all trying to steal the same suitcase? No, most likely it would follow in the footsteps of The Agency, which Sony is working on. You would create your team and signup for missions that are instanced.

Without a truly successful MMOFPS to date, its going to be interesting if any of these upcoming games can pull it off. Personally I’d be more interested in a MMOFPS like Planetside except good.

The MMOs You Never Knew Existed

24 January 2008 | No Comments » | LHStaff

In today’s MMO world there is a bunch of competition. Between pay2play games such as World of Warcraft, and Everquest 2 and free2play games like Archlord, and Dungeon Runners there just doesn’t seem to be much room left for the smaller, more indy, MMO games that get released. In fact most of the time they are so small that you never even knew that they existed. Quite sad really, but no matter, that is why we are here to help enlighten some of you who may be looking for an “off-game” to check out or just like reading about some new games.

Now, before I continue, a couple of these games (and they will be labelled as such) have not yet been released. They are very small indy games, and therefor hold no promise that they actually ever will get released. MMOCrunch is not vouching for them and if you opt into any sort of “pre-order” you are doing so with your own knowledge and caution.

Ok, sorry about that, I had to get the legal mumbo-jumbo out of the way. Onto the games:

  • Exteel - Brought to you by NCSoft, Exteel is a new MMORPG-ish game that is based around mechs. “Gundam” type mechs to be more exact. The game is fast, free, and very fun for what it is. In a review by GameDaily, the newsite compared it more to Unreal Tournament than World of Warcraft, which is definitely a good thing for those of you who were looking for a more aggressive and furious game. Definitely something worth looking at.
  • Lost Colony - This game looks very much to be a Planetside clone. However, that doesn’t necessarily make it a bad game. The creators are a start-up company called Red Planet who decided, after a few bad decisions in their favorite game (Planetside) to make their own MMOFPS game. The game may seem a bit rough on the egdes right now, but it’s also still in development. Something to keep an eye on for any MMOFPS fan in the crowd. (MMOCrunch does not guarentee this game will every be released)
  • Force of Arms - This is another mech-based game, only it’s based on the more traditional mechs from the popular franchise: Mech Warrior. The game is being developed by a company called Wardog Studios. Promising mech customizability, a huge world full of PVP, and faction based combat the game is looking to be quite fun. For an indy developer they seem to have big big plans for their game. Also worth noting is that the game is to be set in a persistent world. Keep an eye on this one. (MMOCrunch does not guarentee this game will ever be released)
  • Pirates of the Caribbean Online - Now, I know what you are thinking, “how can a Disney game be included in your list?” Well, to be honest, a lot of people don’t actually know about this game. It launched a couple months ago with very little fanfair and almost no advertising at all. The game is free2play, and just by that makes it worth at least a gander. Aside from being based in a Disney world, the game is actually pretty fun. For those who have no desire to pay for a pirate-based game such as Pirates of the Burning Sea, this game provides you an excellent free option.

So that’s it, well all I could find anyways. I’m sure that there are a multitude of MMORPGs out there that deserve attention but won’t get them. It’s a sad truth, but games that don’t have multi-billion dollar publishers usually don’t get any spotlight no matter how great they are. So, is there any game I left out?

Move Over Eve Online, Meet Infinity

17 January 2008 | No Comments » | LHStaff

I came across Infinity: The Quest for Earth a few months ago when they released a trailer of a spaceship flying seamlessly from one planet to another with no loading times. Let me say that again, from the surface of one planet into and across space, into the atmosphere of another planet and onto the surface with NO loading time. Today they released a new video of the games combat system. One of the main things I didn’t like about Eve Online and one of the reasons I couldn’t really get into it was because you don’t actually get to fly, it’s basically point, click, wait, even the combat. Infinity allows for real-time combat where you actually get to pilot your ship. How well you can maneuver will no longer be based on stat point, but instead on your skills. By my count that gives Infinity a huge advantage over Eve.

Aside from the real-time combat system and seamless flying, Infinity also promises to have an enormous galaxy to explore. Keyword is galaxy, you can land on a planet, fix your ship and get supplies, but you can’t walk around it. It’s basically like Eve where you’ll spend most of your time in your ship.

“Expect a galaxy with up to hundreds of billions of worlds. You will not be able to visit them all in your whole lifetime, even if you were to spend only one second per world”

Wow, that makes Eve look like my backyard. So how does one travel to all these billions of planets? There will be jumpgates throughout the game, however every ship can equip a hyper-propulsion system so you don’t need to travel all the way to a gate. But just because you have a jumpgame doesn’t mean you’ll get to where you going instantly.

“You can choose your destination on the galaxy map and jump there (providing you have the resources). Jumping will not be instantaneous. It will be very fast to jump to a local system, but jumping to the other side of the galaxy will take from minutes to hours (in real time). “

HOURS! I’m sure they’ll change there minds once gamers get a hold of the game and curse them out. Seriously, who’s going to sit there for hrs, just make the resource cost very very high, problem solved. The game promises to be very open ended, which means PvP. HORAY!

Infinity is still in very early development and is expected to take another two years before the game is finished. So far from what I’ve seen it looks like it might be worth the wait.

More Infinity Videos here