The MMO Notebook

Posts Tagged ‘Sony’

Closed beta has begun for FreeRealms, a free-to-play MMO game being created by Sony Online Entertainment. It is a game designed for the entire family, so gamers of all ages will find something fun to do. Not only can you do the standard MMO things like going out an bashing monsters, you can also do things you don’t normally see in an MMO.

Sony has made several videos available on the FreeRealms site that showcase some of the neat things this game will offer. You can race karts, keep pets, play chess, and do other casual things that has nothing to do with going out and killing creatures. The graphics appear to be cartoony but they do look good.

I will be keeping tabs on this title as I am interested to see how good a game Sony will make of it. It will be free-to-play, but there will be many options you won’t have access to unless you pay to play it. To get access to the full game, you’ll need to pony up $5 a month. Sony says there will be no lack of enjoyment for the free players. I hope they hold to that.

If you are an adult, don’t expect to find a huge challenge while playing this game, but if you want something the entire family can have fun with, then head on over and sign up for the beta test.

I saw over at Tobold’s, which links to the official site, that Pirates of the Burning Sea will be merging servers so that the total available will drop from eleven to four.  That is sad news indeed, but I can’t say it wasn’t expected.

I hate to see any MMO struggle, but Pirates of the Burning Sea just doesn’t offer enough to keep players interested in the long term.  For one thing, avatar combat is absolutely horrible and woefully inadequate.  The end-game is also lacking in that you basically have only two options: port contention or PVP.

I played Pirates for only a very short time.  While I loved the graphics, the gameplay did not pull me into the game in any way.  I know of several other players who ended up in the same boat (pun intended).

So now Sony has several MMO’s that are struggling.  Pirates, Vanguard, Planetside, and The Matrix are all hurting for subscribers.  It makes me wonder just how many subscribers it takes to make these games worth the expense of keeping them running.  Maybe it is much lower than we all think.

On the upside, Vanguard seems to be getting a second wind.  More and more people are trying it out again.  I will chronicle in upcoming posts about some things I have experienced with it lately, including a move to a different server.  More to come on that later.

–Wolfen

I mentioned in a previous post that one of the things that can make an MMO truly great is the community that builds up around and in the game.  If game developers can make it so that players want to communicate with each other, and make it very easy to do, then you add an additional draw that keeps people coming back for more.

There is not a single game out there that has it right.  That is not to say that some don’t try, but their attempts have been half ass and weak.  You will see announcements from companies stating that they care about player-run events and that they fully support them, but those good wishes disappear after a couple of weeks and things fall back down to the status quo.

Now Sony has decided to help support player-run events.  This comes about 10 years too late, but what can you do?  I saw this post from Massively, which points to the official announcement, that tells players to run more events and they will come up with more ways to support them.  This probably sounds great to guilds who like to do such things, but I have no doubt that just like in the past, these things will fade away with nothing of substance coming from the game developers.

Speaking of events, some of the neatest moments in my Everquest career was participating in GM run events.  Some of them that followed the lore and made sense game-wise were great and got people talking.  The problem was that the GM events were few and far between, and just like you would expect, eventually stopped altogether.  GM run events are so rare these days that I wonder if they happen at all.  It is a shame because they added flavor to the game and a neat change to the standard day to day MMO grind.

Giving the players some variety gets them enthused about the game.  GM and player-run events create the sense of a living game world where neat things can happen at any moment.  If Joe MaxLevel is running through the newbie yard on auto-run while watching television, and he suddenly gets attacked by a 100 foot tall rooster who shoots laser beams out its eyes, you can be damn sure that word will spread quickly and draw many players into the fun.  It will create buzz that will keep people talking about the event and they will look forward to the next one.  If the developers follow through with a series of them, ane the players keep talking about it, then you have created something special.

I was reading an article over on MMOCrunch entitled Phantasy Star Goes Offline In Japan when one sentence caught my eye. The author asks the following question: “If the (MMO) world was to end tomorrow, what would you do?” I found that to be a very interesting topic. How would you react if the MMO that you love, that you have played for years, suddenly announced that it was closing up shop in the near future?

I think that for a great many people, their reaction would be summed up in two words: Complete Panic. If this were to happen to a large and very popular MMO, you can bet that the online forums and blogs would explode with a wide range of diatribe. Depending on the person, emotions would surely range from outrage, disbelief, sadness, and depression. In a way, a lifestyle would be coming to an end. What would you do to replace it?

I don’t have much of a frame of reference for such a happening. I have played many MMO’s, but none of them has gone offline for good. Several games have gone down the tubes, but I suppose my judgement in what games to play is better than I thought. Asheron’s Call is probably the biggest game that I know of that went under. Motor City Online would be another. I didn’t play either of those.

The only experience I can relate it with would be the end of a beta test. I have had some incredibly good times at the end of a couple of beta’s I was involved with. The end of the Everquest beta was one of the best gaming experiences of my life. It turned out to be very special. Multiple gods attacked all over the Everquest world and most people were too low a level to defeat them. Giant skeletons appeared in my home zone of Qeynos Hills and wreaked havoc. A large army of orcs attacked players at the Crushbone zone. Rumors ran wild with tales of amazing things happening in one zone and then another. Traveling wasn’t very fast back then, so it took some effort to try and see as much of the events as we could. It was an incredible experience.

What made the end of EQ beta so special was what my friends and I did at the very end. Several of us met up at the Freeport docks just before the servers went down. These are friends that I met playing the beta and I still play with or keep in touch with to this day. When the server shutdown timer started to count down, we decided to swim out to sea. We kept ourselves underwater and swam out as far as we could. As the last shutdown timer was announced, we all turned our characters and looked at one another. A couple seconds later the screen went black with a You Have Been Disconnected From The Server message. It was such a surreal moment. Little did I know that EQ would hold me for more than five years.

So what would I do if Sony announced that they would be shutting down Everquest? First, it would make me sad that such a wonderful game that brought me into the MMO world would be going away. I would travel all over the game world, taking screenshots of everything I could, so that I would have a record of my favorite places in the game.

In the end, I would find myself smiling as I recalled all the fun times I had playing the game with great friends. On the last day, when the last seconds are counting down, you can be sure to find me at the Freeport docks. I will jump into the water and swim. I will swim as far as I can. Until the screen fades to black.

–Wolfen