Geek Syndicate
So the game is free, but you have to pay
to be good at it?
In some cases that’s the case but in
others not so much. Some, like the
Guild Wars series, you just pay for
the game. After that, everything is
free although you can buy additional
boosts if you want. Others sell you
zones one at a time, or unlock character classes. There are some great
implementations of the model and
some bad ones, but by and large it’s
about figuring out how much your
market is likely to want to pay for.
And of course FtP really works by tapping into worst habits of its gamers.
to any actual gameplay. Then you layer in additional features like crafting,
which need you to go out and collect
raw materials, or collecting in-game
pets, and so on. All these are about
adding time to the game.
way to go before it’s in any real trouble. But looking forward a next gen
MMOG is long overdue, something
that allows player input more freely.
Why would you do those extra bits?
Sure, but perhaps a little less brutally
cut-throat. Planetside 2 has promised
player-built and owned bases, but has
yet to make much progress on that.
It’s stable mate Everquest Next, a descendant of one of the earliest mainstream MMORPGs, looks more interesting. It’s promising a reactive world,
one that changes based on players
actions.
Mainly because the game constantly
rewards you with levels, abilities, items
of equipment and so on. I mean, why
do you play any game? For relaxation
and a sense of achievement. MMOGs
need to keep people playing to stay in
business, its not like they sell you the
game and walk away. They start a re-
Like EvE?
Oh, like a Dark side? Well that
I need to hear about.
OK, so you get the selling
point of these games is the
scale, right?
Yup.
Good. So let’s get into that.
If you play a fairly linear
story game like, for example Bioshock Infinite, you’ll
spend maybe twelve to fifteen hours to complete it.
A sprawling, single-player
RPG like Fallout 3 or one of
the Mass Effect series are a lot longer,
but even so most players seem to
complete them by about the thirty to
forty hour mark. For a lot of MMORPGs, this won’t even get you to the
maximum level the game offers, never mind manage all the other things
you “need” to do. For some games it’s
even worse, with Asian-based games
like Lineage being notorious “g &