I'm jonesing hard for a Diablo style Co-Op Online game to play with my buds. It's been a while since a fun Co-Op has come out.

Indeed.

Creston

Now stop paying Sony your money, and go play a real game.

Fortunately I have been MMO free for about 2 1/2 years, so don't worry about me giving Sony money (except for Sony's Stereo and TV electronics, I love the brand in that dept).

Also, I wasn't saying the MMO model is better, I was just saying that Guild Wars isn't an MMO, it's a Battle.Net pumped up a bit, and I'm not saying thats bad either, it is what it is. But it also won't be 'free' to see what is behind door #2. And voluntary or not, statistically people will buy the expansion packs religiously, I don't know anyone who didn't buy the Diablo xpacs.

I did enjoy GW's E3 trial, I will be getting the game also, I'm jonesing hard for a Diablo style Co-Op Online game to play with my buds. It's been a while since a fun Co-Op has come out.

They will be coming out with Expansion Packs that will probably be MSRP of $30 every 6 months, which is equiv to $5 a month, yes

There are a few differences though.

1) You are not FORCED to buy expansion packs. Admittedly, this would eventually make it a bit tougher to find a good game to play, but if you play with buddies, you can all agree to buy the expansion or not.

2) 5 bucks a month VOLUNTARILY is a damn fucking sight better than 14.95 a month just to be able to play the game you ALREADY paid 50 bucks for.

3) These expansion packs will actually feature new elements, new classes, monsters, gameplay etc. When was the last time a MMORPG actually put in massive new content FOR FREE (and not counting shit that was supposed to be available on RELEASE, but then took six months to implement. Hello Star Wars Galaxies.)

Because, gasp, real MMORPGS also release expansion packs.

Guild Wars' deal is fucking sweet, and they've got my money already tied up.

Repeat after me :
Battle.net equivalent = good.
MMORPG / pay per month = Teh Suck.

Now stop paying Sony your money, and go play a real game.

Creston

yeah i wondered about that too having just read an interview with Brian Fargo, looking back he said:

we will have a master distributor who manages the sales, collections, shipping, etc. We are the publisher in regards to owning the goods, paying for marketing and managing marketing and PR. Fortunately I have run a standalone publishing operation so I'm well versed in all the moving parts and the ability to finish a game ourselves. Our gaming public will see inXile on the front of the box while the distribution methods will be invisible.

so it seems all they need to find is another Distributor who can get boxes on store shelves. Maybe Atari?

I'm looking forward to The Bard's Tale; but, wasn't Acclaim publishing it?

If so, it seems like they will be out shopping around for a new publisher...

Anyone have news about that?

Instanced zones are a great tool that was introduced by Anarchy Online and quickly coppied to other games over the last few years

I totally agree, it's a great tool for those few identified areas/zones within an MMO that are super heavily camped.

On the flipside instanced zones solve a lot of problems in the MMO world. Overcrowding of dungeons.. camping in a line for the mob that drops a super-weapon and the bad behavior that tends to follow that.

However, I agree that heavily instanced MMOG's aren't really MMOG's. For example Guild Wars is entirely instanced. You wount ever enter a zone with more then 100 odd people in it. DUring the E3 open alpha the meeting area had some 60 instances.. which seams to me would make meeting up with friends a real pain in the butt.

I guess you would call that, and D&D Online a MORPG because they aren't massive in the sense that there are massive ammounts of people playing with you in the single game world. D&D Online I think won't be instancing their cities and such though.. so it's more a MMOG then Guild Wars.

Instanced zones are a great tool that was introduced by Anarchy Online and quickly coppied to other games over the last few years. They help solve a myriad of problems within typical MMOG's, but over use of them does take a lot of the feel of a MMOG out of it.

It does make sense that Guild Wars is designed the way it is though. I mean almost all the devs are the guys who made Diablo/2 and Battle.net.


This comment was edited on Sep 1, 14:23.

Your right, they are not MMO's (ie EQ, UO, CoH, AC, AO etc). They are Battle.Net clones on steriods. And everyone thinks that Guild Wars (and games like it, etc) is gonna be 'free' as compared to the MMO's, which is wrong. They will be coming out with Expansion Packs that will probably be MSRP of $30 every 6 months, which is equiv to $5 a month, yes, 1/2 of EQ, etc $10 (you can get $10 if you go with a longer subscription) but games like EQ allow you to have thousands of people in game at a time whereas Guildwars will only have like 32-64 people in an 'instanced' area and even the lobbies in GW are instanced. And yes, MMO's now have instanced areas but they only make up about 5% of the game where GW is all instanced areas.

Just simply PR trickery. Not that GW is bad, it's just not an MMO by any means and it's going to have 'delayed' monthly subscriptions. Servers and Bandwitdh aren't free, the players will absorb that.

i dunno, aren't "Instanced MMO's" really just Multi-Player games, with graphical lobby front ends for matching? The actual game world isn't massively multiplayer at all. I spose for D&D this sorta makes sense, re-creating the pen and paper small group, but still all these new heavily instanced games calling themselves MMOs seems wrong somehow.
This comment was edited on Sep 1, 13:51.