MMO’s can roughly be divided into two categories, those that strive to entertain the players and those that strive to let the players entertain themselves.

These two fundamentally different ways of thinking about game design have become more and more distinct in the MMO space over the last 5-10 years. Some players swear by the unconstrained freedom of MMO’s that leave it up to the players themselves to create the gameplay, while others thrive on the content stuffed MMO’s that take you on a more or less pre-planned journey from one end of a fantastic world to the other.

Let’s take a closer look at these two design choices and what it means for the players that play them.

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In an interview with Eurogamer, RIFT executive producer Scott Hartsman mentioned that Trion has no plans for turning RIFT into a free-to-play title stating, “Right now, absolutely no plans whatsoever“.

Not a big surprise to hear given that the overall consensus is that RIFT is doing pretty well, however when asked for subscription numbers, Hartsman declined to provide any. Although he did mention that the game is “absolutely profitable“.

Not only is Trion making money from RIFT, but Hartsman stated they are licensing the technical platform of all three games (RIFT, End of Nations and Defiance) in which they were built on. So it doesn’t seem like money is an issue for Trion currently.

That being said, it’s almost never a good thing when a publisher doesn’t release any numbers, especially after being release for as long as RIFT has. The only number we’ve seen so far is the 1 million registered accounts that were created during the pre-launch. Had RIFT actually hit 1 million subscribers, I’m sure they would have gladly released that number by now.

There must be something to the sandbox design as it was recently announced that Skyrim has sold over 3.4 million copies in just 48hrs, not including digital sales. This outpaces every game this year with the only exception being Modern Warfare 3.

While Skyrim is obviously a single-player game, the Elder Scroll series has always utilized a sandbox design allowing players to truly have the freedom to do whatever they want and go anywhere. This includes, but is not limited to, murdering, stealing and looting, something that most MMORPGs are too afraid to do these days.

The Elder Scroll series takes a realistic approach to crime, where if the player gets caught they must face the consequences of it, either by going to jail or being killed. In the case where the player can escape, they become essentially bared from that town or city, which in itself is pretty cool.

Skyrim also doesn’t pigeon hole players into a specific class, allowing them to user any gear and weapons they find. Players also have the option of completely reworking their perks or skills if they decide they don’t enjoy the character they’ve created without having to start over.

These sort of features have always been used against sandbox MMORPGs, with the argument being they’re just too “hardcore” for mainstream players. I call BS on that. I think the reason the Elder Scroll series has grown into the RPG juggernaut it is, is because players love the freedom to do anything they want. Stealing from or killing friendly NPCs are one of the great hallmarks in Elder Scrolls. How fun it is to go back later on it the game, kill your NPC trainer and loot their awesome gear.

One thing to keep in mind is that Skyrim is a single-player game, so all of these sandbox features are one sided. Meaning no one is going to steal or attempt to kill you unless you attacked first, so there’s really no sense of constant danger for the player as there would be in a MMORPG.

Even so, I think MMO players are getting tired of the same old theme-park system nearly all MMO games today follow, at least I know I am.

Ignited Games today announced DarkEden, their new free to play vampire MMORPG which is now open for closed beta signups.

Not much is know about the new title other then that it will be a horror action game and there will be three factions, humans, vampires and half-breeds. DarkEden promised to have large-scale warfare between the three factions and guild sieges system.

Two systems will be in place, a leveling system and a skill system, with Vampires utilizing the leveling system, while the humans will only use the skill system. I guess that means the Hybrid faction will use both. However there will also be a Rank system where players can learn new Rank skills, regardless of faction.

The game will take place in three different time periods and the day and night cycles will not only affect class abilities, but will also alter the environments.

To signup for the closed beta, head over to the official DarkEden website.

Every Wednesday the guys over at Carbine Studios update us on the progress of WildStar or give us some new info, images or videos to oggle at. This Wednesday was a special post as Executive Producer, Jeremy Gaffney, talked about where WildStar falls in as a MMORPG. Is it a sandbox or theme park game?

Well as it turn out it’s a hybrid of the two. Gaffney writes that players will be able to choose how they want to play.

As a player, you get to choose what’s important to you…

If you want to play without a ton of direction and choose your focus, rock on. If you want clear goals and some guideposts to give some rewards and meaning to the variety of content we make, we’re cool with that too. Play how you want.

Now that might all sound all good and dandy, but I’m sorry to say MMOs do not work on choice, they work on incentives. If the story-line/questing system provides more money or XP than playing on your own, players are going to complete the quests whether they’re sandbox players or not. The incentive is what drives players choice.

Through experience we all know questing is by far the fastest way to gain XP in most of today’s MMORPG and I don’t see WildStar being any different. So to say your game is a hybrid, seems more like a marketing strategy than actuality.

In my mind the only way to have a true hybrid is if the quests offered little to no XP or rewards, with the only incentive being the store-line itself. This way there’s zero incentive for sandbox players and it still provides direction and a story for rail players, where eventually they’ll be assimilated into the sandbox gameplay and won’t need the stories to keep them going.

Looks like there’s a new horror MMORPG on the block. MMOCulture posted some information about a new game called Unveiled: The Supernatural which is currently being developed by Maverick Studios, who has been working on the title since 2009.

Unveiled currently has four announced races, Vampire, Hunter, Werewolf and Witch, three of which you can see in the trailer below, but there will be no classes. Each race will be superior to one and weak against another, so that no single race will be superior. There is both PvP and PvE and a skill system called the Mastery system. Players will have multiple skill trees including weapons, summoning, spells, magic and more.

Check out the Unveiled trailer below.

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Lately I’ve been reviewing a lot of theme-park MMORPGs, so for my next review I wanted to select a sandbox game and decided on Perpetuum. Also because it’s coming up on its one year anniversary in almost exactly a month, so I figured it was a good time for a review.

Perpetuum, which recently seems to have become the MMORPG of choice for disgruntled Eve Online players, like Eve has a player driven economy, open PvP zones, corporations and a steep learning curve. Although overwhelming at first, Perpetuum has some very useful tutorials and the first dozen or so assignments, which can be likened to quests, continue the tutorials if you need them.

The game begins with the character creation screen, which has a ton of customizable options, then moves onto faction selection, class selection and skill specializations, all before beginning the game. It’s a lot to take in all upfront, especially when you’re really not sure what type of player you want to become.

While it may be confusing at first, in actuality it all boils down to three main categories. Tactics and mechatronics, which means what weapons you can use and how strong your mech can become. Industry and research, which correlates to mining materials and crafting items/parts.  Then we have politics and economics for those who want to start up their own corporations and specialize in things like relations, management and finance.

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Gaming genres are a funny thing, they normally give potential players a quick idea of the type of game it is, however it seems that these days the MMORPG genre just doesn’t want to follow the rules. This no more apparent than with Nexon’s latest MMORPG, Dragon Nest.

Of course Dragon Nest has all the aspects of being a RPG game, you have leveling, gear, skill trees and of course quests to complete, but the funny thing is they forgot to add the “massive” part into the game.  You won’t find any persistent world here as every part of the game is instanced with the towns acting as social hubs for players to gather and form groups. What Dragon Nest really is is a single player game with multiple-player features as there’s nothing that ties the game together.

So in order to give Dragon Nest a fair review, I will not be reviewing it as a MMORPG, because it’s simply not. Instead I will review it as a multiplayer online RPG.

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Today over at Tobold’s MMORPG blog, he posted an interesting article stating that he believes there is a general decline in the interest of the MMORPG genre beginning in 2009 when it reached its peak. While I won’t argue with the fact that there has definitely been a decline, I don’t think it’s due to a lack of interest.

Tobold presented two main data points to back up his claim. The first being Google Insights, which can measure search trends over the years and the second being traffic to his blog. While I won’t comment on his website’s traffic, as that could be caused by many different factors, let’s take a look at search trends.

Starting off with Google Insight, you can clearly see below that indeed searches for MMORPG have been on the decline since 2009, however plugging in other search terms can give us some perspective on the rest of the gaming industry.

Using ‘MMO Games’ as a search phrase you can see its been skyrocketing since 2004 and shows no signs of plateauing anytime soon. So while MMORPG has declined, MMO gaming in general is stronger than ever.

Entering general gaming phrases such as ‘video games’, ‘gaming’ and ‘games’ you can see two out of the three have also decline over the last few years and while MMORPG declined much faster, it shows that the entire industry is declining somewhat.

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Today Undead Labs, the developers who are bringing zombie survival to the MMORPG genre, released some information about how their game will work, not as a list of features, but rather through the telling of a story.

The zombie apocalypse is coming. You want to know how everything works. How dangerous is it? How can you protect yourself? We have the answers, but how much can we really say?… So today, we’ll share what we can. It’s not a catalogue of spoilers from the dev team. Instead, what follows are the thoughts and observations of a fellow survivor in McMillanville.

However I’ve taken the liberty of taking the story and creating a list of features out of it. Keep in mind these are taken based on the story, so they many or many not be actual features in the game.

• When a player dies in the game, they come back as a zombie. Permanent Death
  • Players will receive warnings before becoming a zombie
  • Players can be saved from turning into a zombie up to a certain point
• To kill a zombie you have to destroy the brains
• You can shoot off legs or arms, but the zombie will still advance
• Melee attacks, such as boot stomp to head can kill zombies also
• Played can build defense structures, ie towers
• Players will need to gather medical supplies in order to survive
• Players can drag downed players to safety to rescue them
  • Players can only carry so much, so you might have to drop items in order to drag someone.
  • Downed player might lose items also
• Players will have stamina.
  • Stimpacks will be available to give players a boost
  • The more you carry, the faster your stamina will run out, making you slower
• Zombies are attracted by loud sounds
• Players will be able to drive vehicles?
• Doctor will be a playable class?

I love everything about it so far, can’t wait.