Quote:Original post by lightblade

Quote:Original post by Will F
World of Warcraft having recently acquired 6 million people paying a monthy subscription makes me believe that it's not a fad.

Assuming 6 million people paying $10 a month = $720 million a year.

Ok, that is
+720 million
-??? server maintenence fee
-??? server hardware upgrade
-??? costumer support
-??? initial development cost
-??? expansion development
-??? advertisements

add all that up...you decide

and...MMO is definitely a fad, with all the MMO addiction cases around, government will will step in and regulate it. By then, it will fade.

bluntly, a whole load of crap.

like it did to the "LAN" based games, "Networked", "Battlenet", MMO will be another element in games. How many percentage of good games we see these days that DO come with some form of networking as compared to 5-10 years ago?

It is true that not everyone likes MMORPGs, at least not the current model.

Some of the reasons are the time investment, the boredom factor, etc.

I think that the genre has the potential to be highly captivating for much wider audiences when a new design provides a game that is FUN to play for however much time you have. A vast and interactive world (with whatever theme appeals to people at the time) where the actions of players with the tools provided create ongoing and interesting content for everyone else. I'm not talking content like you can make your own objects (that clash horribly with everyone elses, like in second life) but content that is generated by the interactions of players with each other and the environment. Things that can make a huge world change in different areas at different times from prosperous kingdoms, vast empires, tribal warefare, post-apocolyptic waste land, etc. and all the little roles and scenarios and such that come in-between.

Some people would be in for the long haul. Others would want to log into such an exciting world when they hear of some big events on the horizon. They have kept a basic fighter decently equipped and trained and they want to hire out for a couple of hours and fight in some land-dispute battles. They just hop right in, go to the local recruiters office, receive their assignment and off they go to participate in a battle that really will determine the balance of power in that area for a time. That would be a dynamic world where players can AFFECT outcomes. That's the true potential of the genre and perhaps the future if someone takes the risk. Even people who like other genres couldn't resist the pull of participating in one or more facets of such a dynamic world where the content stretched out to infinity.

I think that with a more immersive interface (better than keyboard/monitor, say implant controlled?), the advent of virtual countries is not far away.

Quote:Original post by phantom

Quote:Original post by Xelen
I don't really see RTS having any reason/advantage to go MMO style

I dunno, I think a very large persistant world would work wonders as an RTS, however it would require a certain degree of team work and alliance building, however if my experiances with Eve are anything to go by that shouldnt be a huge problem (many many people there naturally allied themselves into groups to push the story line).

I would have to agree it would be awesome having a persistant world to constantly do battle, harvest resources on and populate in a massive RTS. However the downfall I am seeing is that you may start up, have to go to work, come back to find that your base is no longer exsistant :P

To prevent that, the most feasible option would be to make it a turn-based strategy. That has already been done on massive scale obviously, though they are most often done in the web client. Example would be Kings of Chaos website where you get turn points to attack, and then have to defend yourself while smartly attacking people in order to get money to expand.

However, I wouldn't be surprised to see someone(if they haven't already) go into a lot more detail by having features where they have to take/hold land and harvest resources. Then move their troops through different terrain, and then research to improve their troops. Maybe if it were really massive, they could have cross server wars, so planets at war.

Quote:Original post by Xelen
However the downfall I am seeing is that you may start up, have to go to work, come back to find that your base is no longer exsistant :P

Yes, that is one problem [grin]
that and new people joining the game as well (I made a journal post on this recently infact).

I'm not saying it would be an easy concept, there are alot of details to deal with, but I think it would be cool... oh, and when I say BIG I mean BIG, I'm thinking galactic scale here [grin]

MMO is definitely the future, not a fad. What you will see is MMO evolve into something completely different that is not limited to specific game types. It will go beyond this to become a part of almost every game genre, and then beyond gaming into alternate forms of entertainment not necessarily considered gaming (already happening), and then again, beyond this as an alternate means of browsing the internet.

In the future online communities that currently only consist of people having unique usernames & email addresses, will evolve into also being able to create 3D avatars, which they will then be able to use to play various games or to interact in online communities that are all under the umbrella of the parent online service.

The virtual worlds of current MMORPG’s will evolve to become the virtual lobbies of these online communities, where you can mingle with others and from there connect to the gameworlds of the games you want to play, whether it’s a racing game, or a flight sim, or a FPS, or a MMORPG.

The whole question of how to incorporate in-game advertising will be answered by these online communities, as members will be able to walk into virtual Ford & Toyota dealerships & view online brochures or info videos on any of the current models, and then leave with a virtual vehicle to add to their avatar’s inventory to tool around town in.

The future of MMO looks bright.

reading this, I see a lot of people here don't have a sense of business...

You can NEVER underestimate human creativity. MMO's are STILL evolving and show no sign of slowing down. They're actually picking up speed.

In my opinion, once the cost of internet in North America drops then we'll see a suddon rise in MMO activity, right along side the creative development of games that suit larger audiences. The simple fact is that most of these games are developed for "gamers" and others who have previous history with games.

If you can take Korea as any example, it's integrated into their daily culture. Once we get a good grasp of the technology, and proper well informed business models... The entire thing may just turn into the least expected. None of us truely know what's in store for the MMO's future. As I recall things like the Automibile and TVs where considered fads and many people wouldn't know what to do without either of them.

I'm just going to finish up by saying, there are three reasons why MMOs are going to be around for a long long time.
1. Costs will go down, there are many other ways to drain money from a target audience other then monthly fees. Even then, monthly fees can be reduced given a large enough audience.
2. We're learning to create more stable games that appeal to a larger audience, pretty soon we'll be taking the focus off experienced gamers and begin tapping into a new market of people.
3. There are many problems with current MMOs that are slowing them down, but they STILL continue to expand. I highly doubt that these problems will exist for long. There is no problem that is unsolvable. Once we're done with this set of problems, we'll be given both a better and more enjoyable game, as well as a new set of problems.