17 replies to this topic

[GhostCow]

I got hired to write articles for a gaming site. My first one went up today, which you can read by clicking here. It's not my longest or my best work, but it was enough to get my foot in the door. Now I just have to keep writing something once a week >.<

[Siddhartha]

I got hired to write articles for a gaming site. My first one went up today, which you can read by clicking here. It's not my longest or my best work, but it was enough to get my foot in the door. Now I just have to keep writing something once a week >.<

Describe "hired"... how much are they paying you?

[GhostCow]

I get paid in handjobs and free games, it's an intership

[bonedead]

SIDD YOU BETTER BE PLAYING SWG FIGGIT

[mven]

Yeah but you said you can't talk about dicks. So they better be some pretty good handjobs.

[GhostCow]

Yeah, I'm writing my first review and I couldn't stand not being able to write about dicks and dead babies, so I had a friend draw something that represents my feelings:

[Siddhartha]

SIDD YOU BETTER BE PLAYING SWG FIGGIT

Im playing WoW... I havent found anything better yet. I DID enjoy my swordsman in SWG tho ....

[bonedead]

SWG Emu, they're working on creating a server emulator for Pre-CU. Most of the classes work, no houses/factories/big harvesters, but there's 300-700+ people on at all times.

[Gukag]

It's like you said, pker's are niche gamers nowadays. No one spends millions of dollars developping niche games. Unless overnight all the WoW players suddenly fall in love with being extremely hardcore, I doubt an established succesfull game company would ever try. Newcomers with low budgets and big dreams are not enough. They never deliver on what they promised, and I don't blame them with their resources. Shadowbane and Darkfall are the proof. Agreed with pretty much everything there.

Also, Randall Danger? Last name is win, even if it's a pen name. Hehe Randy Danger.

[mven]

Well I was going to add this reply to your story so people would think you were cool but since that site is terrible and gives me a message that I have to be logged in to post a comment... I will post it here!

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The real issue is money. No one wants to shell out 50 million plus to make a game that could actually compete with WoW to some degree. Instead they choose to make a half assed copy of what WoW has proven works, to appeal to both existing WoW players and hopefully the growing pool of jaded ex WoW players who would still play a WoW-like game so long as it's "not WoW". This never seems to work all that well for any of these games but they keep making them.

The unfortunate thing is that every attempt at a departure from this (even when it predates WoW) seems to fail horribly, even if it's only a small divergence. Look at Warhammer online. It's pretty damned similar to WoW; except they tried to shift the endgame focus from instanced PvE to crappy zone based PvP. In Age of Conan, they tried to escape the boring "turn based" combat of most MMOs and redefine some class roles. City of Heroes/Villains with its fast paced combat and comic book appeal? Star Wars Galaxies attempts a more sandbox-esque approach? Shadowbane with its more open/hardcore PvP? Darkfall with its sandbox style hardcore PvP? Etc etc?

The real question is, do these games fail because they are different? Or do they fail because they just plain suck by comparison? WoW does a lot of things, and what it does, it does really really well. Warhammer is ridiculously similar to WoW in look and feel and a whole lot of other different gameplay elements. WoW just does everything better. The PvE is similar but better designed and flat out more fun in WoW. The PvP in Warhammer which should be its major attraction offers a few things WoW does not but everywhere WoW does the same thing WoW does it better. The combat is better, the battlegrounds are better, the rewards are more interesting, and the competition is more steep... Why play Warhammer?

AoC's combat system which should have set it apart from other games, is horrible and clunky and the game while pretty does little to make up for it. CoH/V is fun for about 10 minutes after you finish the tutorial. Then you realize you are killing the same boring shit over and over again. Star Wars Galaxies had some great sandbox features and probably the coolest player economy of any game ever made. Unfortunately the non-crafting/social aspects of the game left a LOT to be desired. Sony went way overboard trying to fix this and thus killed the game in the eyes of many.

Shadowbane sounded amazing on paper, not quite a sandbox game, but heavily player influenced gameplay. Too bad the game's potential didn't even come close to being realized. It looked bad, it ran bad, it was buggy, the combat was mediocre, the mouse click movement was horrible, the overall game designed allowed for one huge guild/alliance to "ruin the game" for everyone else, etc. Darkfall went even further with a fully sandbox style PvP game... ...and managed to make a game that was even worse than shadowbane. Ugly, clunky, poorly designed, hardly functional at release, the little good this game included was buried in a sea of shit.

So are these games unpopular because they tried to do something different? Or are they unpopular because they simply aren't very good games? If someone invested the kind of money Blizzard invested in WoW in one of these games (I believe I read 75 million for vanilla WoW), and with a company capable of producing similar quality game, could they possibly create a successful game that wasn't simply heavily instanced PvP/PvE? Could someone make Everquest again? Or even do Shadowbane right? Would these games sell? Eventually someone will have to take a leap of faith and make something different and make it right. Otherwise the only game that will ever create reasonable competition for WoW will be another Blizzard release of the same ilk. *shrug*

[GhostCow]

I agree with pretty much everything you said except for the part about PvE in WoW being good. I hate questing the way it's done in that game with a passion. I actually liked sitting on my ass at a camp in EQ for hours on end, whereas in WoW I feel like I'm just running around wasting time. The dungeons in that game are pretty well designed, but I hate instancing with a passion so it just kind of ruins it for me.

[DesertedSoul]

im in closed beta for World of Tanks. Pretty fun.

i dont think they plan on charging a monthly for the game, probably to buy the game yes but i heard thats it.

[mven]

I agree with pretty much everything you said except for the part about PvE in WoW being good. I hate questing the way it's done in that game with a passion. I actually liked sitting on my ass at a camp in EQ for hours on end, whereas in WoW I feel like I'm just running around wasting time. The dungeons in that game are pretty well designed, but I hate instancing with a passion so it just kind of ruins it for me.

I also hate questing with a passion. It was fun the first couple of characters I ran to 60 but after that it got old fast. It made it so old in fact that I pretty much hate questing in newer games too. I also think instancing ruins any chance of a game having a serious community. That said, I still think WoW has the best PvE. The dungeons are well designed, the classes are fun to play even if just vs monsters. If you want to grind you still can and level at a somewhat reasonable speed. The difference is now so many bonuses have been added to quest exp that you would level slower : / In vanilla WoW though that wasn't so much the case.

[bonedead]

im in closed beta for World of Tanks. Pretty fun.

i dont think they plan on charging a monthly for the game, probably to buy the game yes but i heard thats it.

Lol, I just gave away a beta key for this on my blog. The guy that wanted it posted a hilarious story, which is copied here:
"I’d like the beta key because of how this game appeals to my long-standing tank heritage. My father was a tank, as was his father before him. My mother was an APC, but we overlook that because we love the old bird. Either way, that’s neither here nor there.

I’m really interested in putting myself in someone else’s treads, so to speak. My friend Sherman used to tell me that we can’t really understand someone else’s views until we’ve lived their life, and this game seems to be a great way to experience life as another tank. I tanked him for the knowledge, even though he swore quite a bit while delivering it. He’s got a bad case of Turret’s Syndrome, y’see."

So good.

[mven]

Lawl at bad tank humor.

[Gukag]

too many...bad puns...rage...mounting

[Gukag]

Oh, and in completely different news, I check the p1999 forums and theyre having a pvp event:

http://project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=12349

[Giiizmo]

It's EQ PvP, with 3/4 of class mechanics not working properly even when dueling. Seriously?