01-14-2004, 12:16 AM
MMORPGs have character development (if you call powerleveling character development) and dynamic content updates that most single\multi player environments do not have.
I hate to have to use NWN as my example for everything, especially since it is a game with some serious drawbacks of its own, but Bioware has developed and offered lots of free content for their own game. New modules, new monster types, new tilesets, etc. I would say much more and much earlier than what Blizzard did with D2. The goal there is not infinite character development, because Bioware isn't about that, but it certainly could have been.
Another way to look at it is that the company is being paid to host the server that you play on and store the data so that nothing can happen to it.
That's a valid arguement. I think this is possible to do on a private server, but you need some method to keep the raw amount of character data under control. That means a potentially severe limit on the total number of characters. If we could get away with storing data on the client-side without idiots cheating all the time, private servers could have a lot more flexibility.
You can say that FPS games are free so MMORPGs should be too. Well, character development is absent in FPS games and all you need there is a box to route connections as opposed to a server package designed to host a world, character data, and NPC data.
FPS games have all of these data types on a small, short-term scale while allowing a fairly large amount of players. Neverwinter Nights allows all of these things server-side long term. What I'm not sure about is what kind of scale would be practical in such a model. I think this is an idea which has a lot of untapped potential, which is obviously similar to the way you feel about MMORPGs.
As a jaded gamer who doesn't like MMORPGs because of other people, it makes me sad to see the potential such a genre has to only be ruined by other people.
A double-edged sword any time you make games that are reliant upon the interaction of large numbers of people. Even if you make a lame dude play by the rules, but he's still a lame dude.
As for the servers shutting down and you having a worthless product, if enough people liked the game chances are they put together an emulator package for it. Quite a few for the various MMORPGs exist out there. Not the same thing as a company server, but the players will find a way if they want the game badly enough.
This paragraph is actually very supportive of my point. By emulating the server, they are effectively hacking the MMORPG into a Quake-model game. For the people who continue playing the game on those servers, the benefits of the corporate server are not entirely essential to why they enjoy the game. This also contradicts your earlier paragraph about FPS vs. MMORPG, because if people are emulating MMORPG servers on a smaller scale when the game isn't even designed that way, then clearly it would also be possible to develop a game specifically on that model. The difference being that if the game was developed on that model, it would have the advantages of scripting tools and much better scalability on the low end, while lacking the amount of direct support that the company could offer over the long haul if they were getting a monthly fee.
I hate to have to use NWN as my example for everything, especially since it is a game with some serious drawbacks of its own, but Bioware has developed and offered lots of free content for their own game. New modules, new monster types, new tilesets, etc. I would say much more and much earlier than what Blizzard did with D2. The goal there is not infinite character development, because Bioware isn't about that, but it certainly could have been.
Another way to look at it is that the company is being paid to host the server that you play on and store the data so that nothing can happen to it.
That's a valid arguement. I think this is possible to do on a private server, but you need some method to keep the raw amount of character data under control. That means a potentially severe limit on the total number of characters. If we could get away with storing data on the client-side without idiots cheating all the time, private servers could have a lot more flexibility.
You can say that FPS games are free so MMORPGs should be too. Well, character development is absent in FPS games and all you need there is a box to route connections as opposed to a server package designed to host a world, character data, and NPC data.
FPS games have all of these data types on a small, short-term scale while allowing a fairly large amount of players. Neverwinter Nights allows all of these things server-side long term. What I'm not sure about is what kind of scale would be practical in such a model. I think this is an idea which has a lot of untapped potential, which is obviously similar to the way you feel about MMORPGs.
As a jaded gamer who doesn't like MMORPGs because of other people, it makes me sad to see the potential such a genre has to only be ruined by other people.
A double-edged sword any time you make games that are reliant upon the interaction of large numbers of people. Even if you make a lame dude play by the rules, but he's still a lame dude.
As for the servers shutting down and you having a worthless product, if enough people liked the game chances are they put together an emulator package for it. Quite a few for the various MMORPGs exist out there. Not the same thing as a company server, but the players will find a way if they want the game badly enough.
This paragraph is actually very supportive of my point. By emulating the server, they are effectively hacking the MMORPG into a Quake-model game. For the people who continue playing the game on those servers, the benefits of the corporate server are not entirely essential to why they enjoy the game. This also contradicts your earlier paragraph about FPS vs. MMORPG, because if people are emulating MMORPG servers on a smaller scale when the game isn't even designed that way, then clearly it would also be possible to develop a game specifically on that model. The difference being that if the game was developed on that model, it would have the advantages of scripting tools and much better scalability on the low end, while lacking the amount of direct support that the company could offer over the long haul if they were getting a monthly fee.