As more and more MMORPGs get released year after year there seems to be an influx in the ability to do things outside of the standard PvE content that traditionally accompanied these games, essentially what we considered to be “the grind”. Developers have added PvP, extensive crafting systems, and sometimes even some sort of house builder where you can create and live in your own home. Unfortunately, despite having these features added it still always boils down into the traditional grind. Want to build a house? You need money, go grind for some. Want to craft? You need materials, go grind for some. It continues on in this manner until you are, once again, the top level and you have successfully grinded through the entire game.

Before I continue, allow me to re-assure you, this is not another typical “stop the grind” type of discussion. While I don’t much care for the leveling grind, I think we have both read enough about it to be thoroughly sick of the topic. What I am talking about here is alternatives to the traditional leveling grind. Let’s face it, no matter what major MMO you play, the ultimate goal of the game is to get to the top level, but should that really be all? Probably not.

When Ultima Online first came out the ultimate goal was not to get to the highest level (they didn’t even have levels) but rather to skill up in whatever you desired and master that profession. In the early days of the game (when I used to play) there would be all sorts of players ranging from warriors, to shop keepers, to crafters. The game didn’t give you an ultimate goal and didn’t tell you how to play. This is partly why the game held such high appeal for me. Unfortunately, as the 3-D era of MMOs came about the ability to do anything other than the leveling grind came to an end.

Today’s market has shown no signs of changing this mantra either as both Age of Conan and Warhammer Online are promoting their epic story lines inter mixed with vast PvP battles. Unfortunately for those wanting to do something other than getting to the highest level, let’s say open up a store and sell your wares, you are out of luck. Both of those systems are mere bi-products of the MMORPG as we know it today, if theya re even included at all, and while you may not care about leveling or getting epic “lewtz” there isn’t much in these games for you beyond that.

Everything goes into some sort of beta phase these days whether it’s a website, an MMO, a single player video game, or even a product. Beta has become a natural phase for nearly everything we buy and consume today and despite our favorite MMOs going through a rather lengthy closed and open beta process it appears that even upon the official release we are really just transitioning into yet another beta phase: the paid beta.

Now, as we are entering into the next wave of upcoming MMORPGs it appears that this mantra is holding true even more so than in previous years. Back when World of Warcraft was first released it was arguable to say that you were just paying for a beta. After all, all games need to go through these phases and there are likely to be bugs in any MMORPG that gets released. However, what with MMORPGs getting more and more advanced we are starting to see these “pay to play beta” beta phases get dragged out longer and longer. While the World of Warcraft eventually tied down most major bugs, even they must issue patches every few months to keep the bugs down. It’s an interesting problem that probably doesn’t have a permanent solution.

Of course, games having bugs is nothing new to the video games industry. Don’t believe me? Go back and put in any old NES or Atari 2600 game you can find and you’ll notice that there were tons of graphical and physical bugs that made for surprisingly glitchy game play. Back then, however, these were natural occurrences that you just had to accept and ignore as there was no way to get any sort of update. If fact, the first time we did really start to notice how buggy games were was when the first graphical MMORPGs started appearing on the internet which enabled the ability for devs go back and polish their game even after release in order to appease the player base. Before the standard MMO the whole concept of patching was relatively alien to the industry.

Today we have games, MMO and non-MMOs, that are patched regularly and while some games may eventually be considered to be fully patched and complete without bugs, I’d be willing to bet that we are getting awfully close to that becoming yet another part of history. This of course raises an almost philosophical question: if a game an MMO is constantly being patched and fixed can it ever truly be considered complete? I don’t think so…

In continuing with my recent article on the evolution and revolution of MMOs and their lack of truly bringing anything 2.0-like to the industry, the advent of an MMO hybrid often comes to mind. The genre today has many MMORPGs and a few MMOFPSs, but we really have no MMORPG-FPS games out there, a hybrid of the two types of MMOs. Seeing as how enormously successful single player FPS games are (Halo, Call of Duty 4, etc.) and how the MMORPG market is pretty much dominated by the World of Warcraft, it only seems to make sense that a developer would want to capitalize on the most popular genre and turn it into a massively multiplayer RPG event. Allow me to explain a bit.

Today, at this very moment, if you had a strong desire to play an MMOFPS you’d have a couple options. While they are a bit old and sometimes a little slow, they are definitely there and waiting for you to get involved. I am, of course, talking about Planetside and World War II Online. The problem with these games, however, is that they offer little objectives other than killing your enemy. For example, in Planetside the game has devolved into nothing more than a giant push and pull match against the other two faction between the different worlds. While that can be a lot of fun, after a while the whole experience starts to feel a bit shallow as without any real goals you really start to question the whole point of it all. In a game like World of Warcraft, on the other hand, you had an active world with quests, monsters, damsels in distress, and other such things that truly make the world come alive. Unfortunately, the whole combat system is also a bit of a drag in a game like World of Warcraft where everything boils down to pushing a series of numbered buttons. Both offer something unique, but an overall lack in complete gameplay.

So where does that leave us? Well, unfortunately, not to far from where we started. There has been a couple of games that havfe attempted something similar to this but they have both ended in failure and closure. Face of Mankind attempted to do exactly what I was talking about, but lacked the initial polish and big budget to really make a headway in this arena. No matter how unique your game is, if you don’t start off wih a good base you simply can’t survive in this industry. Likewise, Auto Assault, attempted to breed fast action and RPG elements but again failed to garner a large enough audience to sustain it’s own costs. After all is said and done, we have very little to look forward to in terms of combining these two genres as it seems that even the MMOFPS genre may die a slow death. Maybe the rumoured Call of Duty MMO will make headway? I guess we’ll have to take a wait and see approach. Until then I’ll see you guys in Planetside.

The advent of basing an MMORPG around a popular intellectual property (IP) is nothing new to the genre as with such a competitive market it seems almost foolhardy not to include one into your game, however, recent subscription data seems to suggest otherwise. Pirates of the Caribbean, Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Final Fantasy, Star Wars; all of them have been made into MMORPGs, and yet, all of them have failed to live up to the mantra of the overall series.

Today’s top five MMORPGs (World of Warcraft, RuneScape, Lineage, Lineage 2, Dofus – in that order) are all based on either new IPs or relatively unknown IPs. While it’s easy to look at the World of Warcraft and make the claim that it is based off the Warcraft IP, allow me to remind you that amongst the mainstream society it is still relatively known outside of the MMO. I’d be willing to guess that while many of WoW’s first subscribers were fans of the series, most of them today are not, especially when comparing it to some of the truly mountainous IPs that are now MMORPGs.

The best selling, highest subbed MMORPG based off a true successful IP is Final Fantasy XI, which unto itself is not all that surprising. Just like WoW is based off a video game IP so is Final Fantasy XI, namely the Final Fantasy IP. Could this be why these two games are so successful? Despite having major disparities in their subscriber base (10 million compared to 500 thousand) the two games share a common similarity in that they both come from IPs that are based off of popular video games. If you were to look at other properties such as the Lord of the Rings Online, which currently has around 250 thousand subscribers, you’d notice that while the actual IP for the Lord of the Rings is actually stronger amongst society, the game is doing far worse that either of the previous. Why? Well when you take a popular video game IP and make a new video game out of it you already know that there is a dedicated fanbase for that game. However, when you take Lord of the Rings and make a video game out of it you aren’t guaranteed that fans of the series of books (or movies) will be all that interested in the video game and that is were the disparity lies.

Of course, the same can be said for games such as: Star Wars Galaxy, Pirates of the Caribbean Online, and The Matrix Online (amongst others). While each of these movies has enormous cult followings for their movies, each game has failed to truly live up to expectations. Whether that’s a quality issue or otherwise, however, is up to debate. Regardless, though, one has to admit the sheer difference in the size of these IPs between their perspective markets is vast, where the Star Wars series is easily the most popular movie series of all time, the MMORPG fails to show that same popularity and the same can holds true for near all of the MMO IPs released to date.

A few weeks ago I stumbled across one of the most delightful MMO browser games. In fact, I was so enamored by it that I actual convinced three of my other friends to play it with me in a world populated by… well at least a few hundred other would-be kings. The main reason why I was so enamored by it, and I am assuming you’ll be able to make the distinction as well, is due to it’s inherent familiarity with long-time famed series: Civilization. Let’s take a closer look at Ikariam, a massively multiplayer online strategic browser game.

Despite its instant familiarities with Civilization, the gameplay is actually quite different, but don’t be too quick to give up hope. Where Ikariam is different than Civilization is also why Ikariam is such a fun game. Some key differences include:

• This game is time based, not turn based.
• You won’t ever get to different eras of technology. You’ll primarily be hanging out with Caesar and crew in this game.
• The entire world is divided up into hundreds of islands with a specific amount of space available on each for newcomers and colonies.

Now that I have dashed away the key differences let’s continue on to the actual review of the game which, like I have stated before, is still quite good.

You’ll start your new-found civilization on a random island, most likely already populated by other players. Depending on where you start off you could start on a relatively young island or an island already teaming with huge civilizations. For example, when I started I was placed on an island where the highest level city was only 5 (out of 24), where as, one of my friends started out on an island where the highest level was level 18. Needless to say, he was in a much heavier situation than I was. Naturally you’ll start your city with nothing but a town hall that is level one and from there you’ll build all your buildings in designated plots of land.

Now before I continue on, I think it’s important to explain briefly the mechanics that make Ikariam work. I mentioned above that the game is time based, not turn based. This means that every building you make (only one at a time per city) will take a certain amount of time and resources to make. So provided you have the amount of wood and ore required to upgrade, let’s say, your town hall it still means you’ll have to wait until it’s actually built. These times depend on the level you are upgrading your building too and range anywhere from 10 minutes to 12 hours and beyond. The same holds true for troops, trading, transporting, and warfare. Everything is time based and, while that may seem like a turn-off, the system works surprisingly well.

Continuing on now that we’ve explained the logistics of the game a bit more, you’ll find near everything in Ikariam that you’d expect from Civilization, only smaller and more suitable for a “play for 15 minutes” type style. Barracks allow you to build troops, academies allow you to invest in research towards one of four fields (seafaring, military, economy, science), hideouts allow you to train thieves, trading ports allow you to build cargo fleets, and shipyards allow you to build military fleets. All the same fun stuff you’d expect from a Civilization-esque game.

In order to recruit troops, research certain things, and build and upgrade buildings, however, you’ll need the resources to back them up and sometimes, those aren’t very easy to come by. In fact, this is probably one of the few annoying things about the game. When you start on your island you’ll have two resources available, wood and one of the other four resources. Each island has a different resource and depending on which you land on you could end up with marble, sulfur, crystal, or grapes. Each has their own uses and you’ll notice that each becomes extremely important in the later parts of the game, especially grapes. Early on, however, the most important resource you’ll need will be marble, and if you have no instant access to that material you had better start asking some of your neighboring islands that do to cut you a deal or else your expansion has ground to a halt. It’s a slow process and an even slower fix as it could take weeks to secure some marble. When all is said and done though, you should be back on your path to civilization greatness.

Of course, what would a good review be without a look at the battle system? Yes, worry not, those troops that you plan on amassing will be put to good use. Ikariam offers two direct ways to utilize your military; pillaging and occupation. They do exactly what they sound like. Should you decide to pillage your neighbor and succeed you’ll get an amount of their resources/gold (depending on how fast your troops can load up your ships). If you decide to actually occupy a city and succeed you’ll get full use of that city until such times as you decide to withdraw. The actual battles are a bit mundane and offer no graphics, but it’s still satisfying knowing that your troops are returning with a bounty of treasure.

So that’s basically it. There is a lot to do in Ikariam and if I really wanted to I could probably explain on and on about all the minute details that make Ikariam so much fun. However, as I am sure this block of text has already fulfilled your review quota for the day, I’ll just tell you to go out there and give the game a try! It’s 100% free and while they do offer a RMT system I haven’t noticed anything that they offer to give any players a noticeable advantage. For those who wish to look me up here is my information:

• Server: Iota
• Username: Dmitry
• Island location: 2, 32

Hope to see you there!

Ikariam.org

The crazy bastards did it! I don’t know why they decided to do what they did but the brilliant minds behind the charmingly free2play MORPG Mythos has decided to tack on another M to that acronym and fully realize it as a true MMORPG. That’s right, as of last week, Flagship Studios released unto their test server their newest incarnation that is headed towards the once fully instanced game, that is a persistent world dubbed the “Overworld”.

For those that have yet to play Mythos or even hear about it, the game is being developed by some of the same people who brought you Diablo 2. As such it plays much like it; point top move, right click to use a skill, left click to attack, massive amounts of loot, etc. Up until last week, the rpesentation of the game was much the same, you and a few friends party up in the town (usually StoneHill) and take off into an instanced zone on your way to whatever quest you were on. It was a simple straight forward method, but it was also one that worked fairly well. Well apparently the developers disagreed.

While not yet available on the actual server, those players whose curiosity needs to be peeked can find that if they head on over to the test server they can experience Mythos ala World of Warcrat style. That is to say, you can go anywhere and do anything with anybody at anytime. For those of you who are fearing that this game will become yet another WoW-clone now that it has lost much of it’s past identity, don’t worry, while the presentation may be completely disheveled the core gameplay is still much the same. Lots of baddies, lots of flashy skills, and lots of loot await you in Mythos just like before. The only difference is now it’s all in one big persistent world. It’s all very exciting stuff!

Lately, there has been a lot to talk about in the MMO-verse, with Age of Conan just getting released and a World of Warcraft expansion pack on track for a holiday unveiling there seems to be nothing that can stop the momentum gained by the industry. However, despite all the success being thrown around by the top five MMOs (World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Age of Conan, EVE Online, Final Fantasy XI) there seems to be very little that is truly pushing the genre towards the “next step.”

In every walk of the technological life there are upgrades to the original. Even something as simple as the web was fully upgraded into what has become to lovingly termed: web 2.0. So the same should hold true for MMO, right? You’d think so, but very little has actually changed since the dawning of the 3D MMORPG in the heyday of Everquest. There has been smaller changes like the advent of a quest based storyline and an enhanced mini-map and traveling system, but nothing I’d really call revolutionary, or next generation. Let’s face it, nobody out there is really attempting to do anything to set a new standard in the industry.

Now I know that there is at least one EVE Online fan reading this right now in disgust. Let me say this right now, EVE Online is definitely a different experience and CCP has done a marvelous job and creating a successful MMO that strays from the typical archtype that most MMOs follow today. However, that said, they are not setting a standard in the industry. EVE Online and CCP will not be changing the way the industry makes its games and there probably won’t be any long lasting affects from their technology. The original Xbox was the first to really incorporate seamless online and now it has become the standard. MySpace truly pushed the bounds of “web 2.0″ with it’s social networking applications and it has now become the standard. Apple created the first truly desirable MP3 player and it has now become the standard. All of these are examples of an industry that was expanded on by companies that wished to create a fresh experience on an old application and as such truly changed the landscape of how everybody else played in that field. So despite EVE Online’s unique gameplay they certainly haven’t changed the way developers make games.

So, where does that leave the industry? With the huge success of World of Warcraft, which handily dashes the success of the other top four MMOs combined, game developers desperately need to find new ways to make their games different and if that means employing a new combat system (Age of Conan) or seriously enhancing the PvP and RvR settings (Warhammer Online) then thats what these companies will do. Unfortunately, many of these “enhancements” are gimmicky at best and won’t be offering any true MMO 2.0 anytime soon. However, and this is just my prediction, I think it’s safe to say that after all the so called “WoW-killers” have debuted to date, the only MMO that will truly begin to pick away at the house that Blizzard built will be an MMO 2.0 game. Personally, I’m keeping my eye on Copernicus.

P.S. I am in no way calling Age of Conan’s combat system or WAR’s RvR system bad or flawed, but, rather, non-revolutionary. Yes I have tested out both; Age of Conan beta, Warhammer Online at E for All 2007.

We here at MMOCrunch are no strangers to speculation, as can be noted by our past experiences with the ponderings over the existence of Diablo 3. Personally, I have no doubt in my mind that Blizzard is working on it even as I write. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that it’s been officially announced. Blizzard, being the masters of polish and secrecy that they are, has been keeping a tight lid on all of it’s secret projects, but is that about to end for Diablo 3?

Blizzplanet.com seems to think so and for good reason to. While rooting around their latest issue of PC Gamer Magazine and doing a little research they have actually found some pretty reliable information that PC Gamer Magazine might get the “go ahead” from Blizzard to unleash all the details in their August issue. Of course, it all started with this key comment from one of PC Gamer Magazine’s writers:

“NEXT MONTH
Have you ever had a secret that you’re just dying to blurt out, but you can’t for another month, and the stress of holding it in makes you want to do the pee-pee dance? That’s what the PC Gamer staff is doing right now, because the August issue will be chock-full of exclusives, including a top-secret cover story so huge we had to go to [CENSORED] to get it. Just 30 days more …”

Pretty tantalizing huh? It’s obvious that PC Gamer at least has something that we will want to know about, MMO or otherwise. However, there is some added evidence on top of that that lends credence to Blizzplanet.com’s logic such as:

• A few weeks ago Blizzard invited a number of gaming press magazines to their headquarters in Irvine, CA. Was PC Gamer Magazine one of them? Maybe…
• PC Gamer Magazine knew about Starcraft 2 before it was announced.
• Blizzard’s Worldwide Invitational  is in late June.
  

Amongst other things that you can read up on by following the link at the bottom.

So could this possibly be it? Are we really only a month or two from getting an official announcement for Diablo 3. I am certainly hoping so. Stay tuned, as we get more information in the coming months!

Check out the original article HERE.

There is one MMO that no matter how many times I unsub, I always end up returning to it a few months/years later. It’s not World of Warcraft, or Everquest; I have absolutely no desire to ever return to either of those games. The game I am talking about is Planetside. Time and again I have returned to the game to find new vehicles and features awaiting me and even now, as I just resubbed, I have found even more fun to be had. So when is the sequel coming out?

Unfortunately, probably never. As much as I hate to admit it, Planetside was never really a success story for Sony. Despite holding adequate subscription numbers for a decent amount of time the game just failed to generate any real profits, as can be seen in the poor early mismanagement of the game (updates we very few and far between, bad expac), but this doesn’t mean that Planetside doesn’t deserve a sequel. Despite having some gameplay quirks and questionable goal orientation it was actually a lot of fun and a sequel would be able to fix/build on to those gameplay elements.

Today, the FPS genre is more popular than it has ever been before. Last year Halo 3 sold more than 9 million copies world wide, and Call of Duty 4 sold over 7 million. With this re-invigorated market I don’t see it completely unjustifiable that a PS2 would be considered. After all, everybody likes being part of a huge battle, and certainly Planetside achieved that. Now if only there was an updated website that continually added new fix and gameplay suggestions for the game to help focus the commuity in an effort to improve the game so said developers would know where to start with their new Planetside…

Your welcome.

The MMO genre of gaming is not a particularly young one. In fact, I’d say it’s only a few years younger than the modern RTS and FPS genres (I remember playing my very first graphical MMO in 1997). So, suffice it to say, I was a bit surprised when I found out that not one MMORPG has made it onto GameRanking.com’s top 100 list. I’ve checked the list and I’ve checked it twice (ho ho!) and I’m telling you there are no MMOs to be found which raises the question: why haven’t any MMOs made it there yet?

Believe it or not, despite the genre being over a decade old now there really aren’t that many MMOs in the market. In fact, of the actual “pay2play” model of MMO there are typically only a handful of games released each year, as opposed to the thousands of Wii, 360, PS3, PC games that are released each year. This probably has had some sort of impact as to why there are no MMOs on the list. Let’s face it, when there are so many games coming out every year the MMO is bound to slowly get pushed down the list until a new one makes it back up there. In fact, GTAIV actually pushed World of Warcraft right off the list (who now sits at #101). However, that said, this logic does seem to conflict with the “quality over quantity” saying. Despite putting out fewer games than most other genres, there are still many quality issues that exist within the games upon launch… which brings us to our next issue.

One of the most obvious reasons as to why most MMOs never make it to the top of review scores is primarily due to quality. MMOs are HUGE worlds with many aspects of gameplay all running simultaneously with thousands of gamers. The sheer scope of programmability within these games would probably dwarf about ten single player games of near any other genre. Because of this there are a number of quality issues that must be tested and, unfortunately, the best test usually occurs after the game has gone live. As many MMOGamers know many of the biggest fixes and features aren’t readily patched until a couple months after the games release, which cites the mantra of many gamers today: “An MMO on launch day will be completely different 6 months later.” Perhaps if reviewers would put up two reviews of an MMO there would be a better “leveling off” of the scores…

Anyways, take from this what you will. World of Warcraft still sits at a very respectable #101 right above Zelda: A Link to the Past (one of my favorite games) with the next “MMO” being WoW: Burning Crusade at #142. After that there is nothing until beyond the 200 mark. It’s very clear that GTAIV effectively pushed WoW out of the running, but even before then WoW was only at #99 which is just barely scraping it by. No telling what MMO will make it there next. While Age of Conan looks like it will receive fair scores, I seriously doubt it’ll reach the top 100. Anybody want to take bets on Warhammer Online?

Check out the full top 200 list HERE.