MMORPGs That Failed (And Why) Part 1

Some MMORPGs failed to capture players’ attention because they were ahead of their time. Others failed because the developers didn’t have a clear goal in mind. And others simply due to the saturated market that just couldn’t bear another generic and dull MMORPG.

We delve through some of those games and try to find out what went wrong.

ASHERON'S CALL 2: FALLEN KINGS MMORPGAsheron’s Call 2

Image via Wikipedia

(November 2002 – December 2005)

What’s the idea: Creating a sequel to one of the most beloved MMORPGs can be tricky – just ask EverQuest 2 developers. Experienced studio Turbine tried its best... to annoy players.

What went wrong: They succeeded in the arduous task of making a sequel that was dubbed by fans as “nothing like the original game”. No one was happy and Asheron’s Call 2 featured a vast and completely empty world. Graphics were better but that’s not the issue here, as players quickly reverted to Asheron’s Call1.


AUTO ASSAULT MMOGAuto Assault
(April 2006 – August 2007)

What’s the idea: Something of an Interstate ’76 or Twisted Metal drive’em up couldn

’t sound too bad. It was NetDevil’s second attempt at MMOs, after Jumpgate. With some nice combat

vehicles, upgrades and explosions, what could go wrong?

What went wrong: A lot, it seems. The potential was thrown out of the window by making the game dull and not funny at all to play. An action and driving game where your skills don’t determine your success is just wrong. The weapons don’t hit your enemies thanks to your aim and driving skill, but to your stats. So you would just drive in circles hoping that the die roll would finally strike a hit. Obviously, everyone grew tired of it.

Auto Assault was an action game with the elements of other classic MMOs, instead of choosing its own path. Released in April 2006, the servers were shut down on August 2007 due to lack of subscribers.


EARTH & BEYOND MMORPGEarth and Beyond
(September 2002 – September 2004)

What’s the idea: A sci-fi MMORPG where players could not only fly places but also get out of their ships and engage in quests, combat and crafting. It still manages to stand apart from similar themed MMOs like Eve Online or Jumpgate, and is fondly remembered by most who played it.

What went wrong: Not easy to say exactly. The acquisition of E&B developer Westwood Studios might have something to do with it (but we’re guessing here). The player base wasn’t as high as expected, and EA decided to focus on other projects, like The Sims Online. It is also said that the decline in subscription was caused by Star Wars Galaxies. We may have to file this one in the “ahead of its time” archive, with many players still hoping for a sequel.


FURY MMORPGFury
(October 2007 – August 2008)

What’s the idea: To focus on PvP and try to distinguish itself from the other MMORPGs based on this idea.

What went wrong: It wasn’t enough. For Fury to succeed it should also be polished, without bugs or lag, but it wasn’t. Critical reception was below average, practically dooming the game to oblivion. Less than a year after release, Auran closed the servers.

Image via Wikipedia

MOTOR CITY ONLINE MMOGMotor City Online
(October 2001 – August 2003)

What’s the idea: A racing game in the style of Need for Speed but with classic cars, just waiting to be tuned. It was released in 2001, a time when racing MMO games were very scarce.

What went wrong: There was a very good reason for the lack of racing MMOs: lag. While this could be overlooked in other genres, it’s extremely difficult to ignore cars jumping all over the place and turning gameplay into a mess. It was clearly ahead of its time, subscriptions were few and falling, and Motor City Online went offline on August 2003. Users earned access to The Sims Online, Ultima Online or Earth & Beyond, two of them featured in this article.

EA is trying again with Need For Speed: World Online, a free to play MMO. Nowadays lag isn’t much of a problem, so things are looking good.

Source: http://www.mmorpgate.com

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5 reasons why Aion can take on World of Warcraft

Does NCSoft's fantasy online RPG have what it takes to topple the undisputed king of the genre?

Every time a new Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) is released, the proclamation that it will topple the king of all MMORPG’s, World of Warcraft, is inevitable.

First there was Age of Conan, then there was Vanguard, then Tabula Rasa and Warhammer Online. Despite each of these titles’ aspiration to take down Blizzard’s MMORPG, none have come close to reaching World of Warcraft’s estimated 11 million subscribers.

And then there’s Aion, NCSoft’s latest online role playing game which is set to launch in the United States on September 22nd. Described as an amalgamation of the best aspects and features of modern MMORPG’s, Aion is striving to become one of World of Warcraft’s largest competitors.

However, even though Aion has an already large subscriber base in Asia and is being helmed by the team behind successful MMO’s like Guild Wars and Lineage, does it have what it takes to make a substantial dent in World of Warcraft’s notoriously large subscriber base?

Here’s some reasons why Aion could just be the next MMORPG you’ll become addicted to starting late September.

5. Aion has been around since 2008

One of the main reasons why new MMORPG’s fizzle out and eventually fade into obscurity is because their subscription base isn’t stable. Initially, there’s a huge surge of first-time subscribers who are curious to check what all the fuss is about, but eventually, a staggeringly large amount of gamers end up returning to more established and populated options like World of Warcraft

It takes time and money for a game to flesh out its end-game content and iron out the kinks and glitches, but unfortunately, most gamers aren’t willing to stick around long enough for that to happen. It’s a Catch-22, really, and it’s this unfortunate dilemma that has doomed games with tons of potential like Age of Conan.

Aion, however, already has a stable, established subscriber base It was launched in Korea in November of 2008, and has since accrued an estimated 4 million subscribers in Asia alone. Additionally, the developers have had almost a full year of feedback from gamers actively playing Aion on live servers to ensure a successful and smooth launch in the United States.

There still is tons of room to grow and improve, sure, but if the numbers coming out of Asia are indicative of anything, Aion is a MMORPG that has the longevity, quality and popularity to stay around for quite a while.

4. Better graphics and customizable character appearance

As artistically creative and beautiful as World of Warcraft’s is, there’s really no denying that it’s aging graphics engines is one of the game’s weakest aspects. Aion’s graphics, however, look absolutely stunning for a MMORPG, thanks in no small part to Crytek’s heavily modified CryEngine that the game is built on. Not only did Aion take GameAmp’s 2006 E3 MMORPG “Best Graphics” Award, but it also offers a wealth of character customization options that World of Warcraft can’t even dream of competing against.

When you first create your character, you can modify virtually every aspect of your character. Gender, race, height, size of individual body parts, skin tone, hair styles--everything from your character’s voice to their facial features are customizable, allowing you almost limitless creative freedom in the creation process.

But that’s not all. You can even modify the appearance of your in-game weapons and armors through merchants and other non-playable characters in Aion. If you want to change the color of your armor, just purchase a dye. If you don’t like the way your sword looks, merely swap it out with the model of another sword without effecting its actual stats.

3. Hybrid of PvP/PvE Content

In World of Warcraft, there’s a pretty defined boundary between the world of Player versus Player (PvP) and Player versus Environment (PvE) content. With the exception of the rare city raids, random ganking and Wintergrasp battles, you’re usually either raiding PvE dungeons or participating in PvP battlegrounds and arenas. The two worlds seldom overlap.

Aion, on the other hand, is promoting a new type of gameplay appropriately named PvPvE. In PvPvE, you’ll find yourself fighting alongside other members of your faction to control strategic locations where vendors who sell exclusive items can be found.

However, while you’re busy waging war against enemy gamers, a third faction of NPC’s, the Balaur, will periodically intervene and radically alter the course of battle. Sometimes the Balaur will ally with you, sometimes they’ll fight against you, and sometimes they’ll attack both sides to make each battle exciting and unpredictable.

2. You have freaking wings

Seriously. How awesome is that? You obtain your wings early on in Aion and they grant you the ability to take flight for short periods of time. Later, you get the option to purchase upgraded wings which allow you to fly for extended periods of time.

While World of Warcraft does have some sweet flying mounts, you can’t really do anything on them besides travel. However, the celestial wings in Aion are not a silly gimmick or a mere form of transportation. Rather, flying is an integral part of the game play and adds a brand new dimension to both PvP and PvE combat.

For instance, picture a fight between two gladiators. They run around, strafe, looking for openings and lunge in when the time is right. Now imagine both gladiators are still trying to stab one another, only this time they’re strapped in fighter jets and are doing some super sick barrel rolls in mid-air miles above the ground, inverted plunges, nose dives and all sorts of other jaw-dropping aerial acrobatics.

Awesome, right? That’s the typical PvP experience in Aion. Only minus the fighter jets, of course.

1. Does anyone still want to play World of Warcraft?

I love World of Warcraft. I really do. But after five years of playing, it’s gotten old. There’s only so many times you can raid Naxxaramas, Ulduar or the Argent Tournament stuff before you begin to feel that the game’s once exhilarating and intense gameplay has become a repetitive and tedious chase for shinier, newer gear.

Blizzard has done a fantastic job of adding new content to keep things fresh and exciting, but even the most hardcore World of Warcraft fan will probably admit its time for something different. At least until Icecrown raids and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm draws nearer anyway.

Will Aion kill World of Warcraft? Not a chance. World of Warcraft has been around for almost five years now, and part of the reason why it’s so popular is because it is a genuinely good MMORPG. However, I do think Aion has a very good chance of stealing a nice chunk of subscribers from the MMORPG behemoth.

If Aion is everything its hyped up to be, then it could very well be the first game in a long while to give World of Warcraft a decent challenge and make gamers excited about MMORPG’s once again.

by Mark Fujii

http://www.collegenews.com/

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Mobile MMORPG TibiaME clocks up 10,000 subscribers

One of the first ever mobile MMOs, TibiaME, which launched all the way back in 2003, has apparently been enjoying a very successful resurgence in the first half of 2009 - clocking up a whopping 10,000 subscribers.

"TibiaME has been online since 2003 and it has always performed quite well," says Benjamin Zuckerer, product manager for TibiaME. "However, the exponential growth, which we are experiencing at the moment, is a new league."

The game apparently doubled its subscriber number during 2008 after launching in Indonesia, experiencing a 105 per cent jump in its subscriber base.

"Altogether, TibiaME now has an active player base of around 40,000 players. As far as we know, TibiaME is therefore not only the first but by now as well the biggest mobile MMORPG in the world," concludes Andreas Weikl, marketing manager for CipSoft.

by Spanner Spencer

Source:http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk

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Aion of Make the Happy Translationing Task Force

We've all seen bad translation jobs in games before, but when you have a two-million word Korean MMORPG to make accessible to the West, where do you even start? The NCSoft team sounds off on the monumental task of localizing a game like Aion.

Tell me if this sounds familiar to you: You find out about a new free-to-play MMOG from across the Pacific, and for whatever reason it catches your fancy. Maybe it's an interesting setting, maybe it's some cool concept art, but whatever: It's free, right? You're playing it, you're having a good time, you're immersed, and then you turn in a quest, and see, "You did make the congratulation!" A poorly localized game can color your whole experience - and that's exactly the pitfall that the NCSoft team is looking to avoid with its upcoming wing-based MMORPG, Aion.

I spoke with members of NCSoft's Seattle-based team about the task of bringing an Eastern MMOG to the West. To start off, here are some interesting numbers: There are almost 2,000,000 words that needed translating in Aion - as Janna Silverstein puts it, that's 16 "fat fantasy novels" (at 130,000 words per book). With 17 writers on the team, that's approximately 120,000 words per person over a period of just five months. Yikes.

But to properly do its job, the team couldn't just feed all of that text into Google Translate and call it a day - the inherent difference between translation and proper localization, said Fran Stewart, is that while translation "lets you use what I've made for myself," localization "means changing a product I made for me into something FOR you." Localization, in other words, is to ideas and concepts what translation is for words. "If we can get gamers working their way through the game without even realizing that it started out in a completely different language, then we've done our job," added Conor Sheehy.

In the case of Aion, then, this meant literally starting from the beginning - not just going through the game line by line and translating the text, but looking at "how each player learns the backstory while playing through their own personal narrative," said David Noonan. But even then, it's not always that simple - after all, Aion is a game developed for an Eastern audience by an Eastern developer. While Western fantasy is heavily steeped in Tolkien-esque mythology, Eastern games typically are not.

Yes, there is a culture gap, but it's a gap, not "some impassable chasm," said Noonan. Besides, it isn't like the original developers weren't familiar with Tolkien and Western fantasy - Marti McKenna admitted that she had been surprised by "how many western fantasy references the developers had managed to sneak into the text!" Added Erik Bear, "I think Asian fantasy is mostly different from western fantasy in that it's less about the quests of a single hero and more about the conflict as a whole," pointing to the influence of books like Romance of the Three Kingdoms, where the story is less about an ultimate battle with good guys and bad guys and more about all sides of a war.

To that effect, Daneen McDermott pointed out that, "Both Elyos and Asmodians are the good guys. Even if they don't agree about it." There were other hangups beyond the culture gap, too - technical ones. The cutscene animations were drawn to the original Korean voicing, for one, and even names were an issue: "In Korean, if you want to call something the Impenetrable Iron God Shield of the Acadian Hero-Nymph, you may need as few as seven characters. That's roughly as wide as the word 'Roughly,' by the way," remembered Stewart.

Other difficulties included translating poetry, jokes, and storybooks - or even just making sure you haven't written yourself into a corner when altering text to fit Western sensibilities, since the original developers in Korea are still making new content for the MMORPG. It's certainly not easy work, and the balance between throwing out the original content entirely and "slavishly maintaining EVERY bit of meaning" even if that destroys the pacing and storytelling, is a tough one.

Still, on the whole, the translation industry has its bright spots - no matter the language. Noonan expressed fondness for the localization done on the French Asterix comic books, whereas Robin MacPherson said she was a fan of the work Atlus had done with Persona 3 and Persona 4: "(A) terrific job of localizing a lot of text, creating some great dialogue, and doing it in such a way that it retained its Japanese feel."

To read the full-length interview with the NCSoft Aion translation team, head over to WarCry.

bye John Funk

Soucre: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/

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Breaking News: PC Gamers to get F2P MMORPG from Blizzard

– Breaking News — Rumors of Blizzard’s new MMORPG have leaked! Blizzard Entertainment, the folks behind the enormously popular fantasy MMORPG World of Warcraft, have been working on a new MMORPG for the last few years now. Blizzard even confirmed that they were working on a new MMO back during the Burning Crusade London Launch event when Itzik Ben Bassat, the vice president of development, said “When we announce our next MMORPG it’s not going to be another WOW–we’re not a company that tends to tread the same ground,”. He also added that this new MMO would “…be something innovative and new that really brings entertainment to another level.”

Since Blizzard announced that they’re working on a new MMORPG, the internet has been rife with speculation about the project. According to the rumors we’ve heard the new MMORPG may be free to play. We have confirmation from several sources that there have been serious discussions about implementing a free to play model with optional micro transactions but until an official announcement is made, this story remains a rumor

It wouldn’t be an unprecedented move if Blizzard’s new MMO really were free to play. More and more major game publishers are jumping on the ‘free to play’ bandwagon. Electronic Arts for example just recently entered the free to play market with their online MMOFPS Battlefield Heroes and strategy game BattleForge. Sony has had enormous success with their free MMORPG ‘Free Realms’. Many prominent individuals in the gaming industry have already praised the ‘free to play’ model as the future of gaming. Peter Moore, the current CEO of Electronic Arts, has already stated that free-to-play was absolutely “the future of where our key franchises are going”. Many old pay to play games have already gone free to play including RF Online and ArchLord with Chronicles of Spellborn confirmed to go free to play by next year. Funcom’s Age of Conan is also rumored to go free to play soon.

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