Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion Online at Shuffle iT => Dominion General Discussion => Goko Dominion Online => Topic started by: polonkus on August 20, 2012, 02:38:24 pm
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http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-08/20/goko-launch-problems
One tidbit I hadn't seen yet: DXV confirmed Goko has a 5-year exclusive contract to Dominion.
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http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-08/20/goko-launch-problems
One tidbit I hadn't seen yet: DXV confirmed Goko has a 5-year exclusive contract to Dominion.
I saw Jay from RGG confirm that over on BGG.
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I like being called a fanatical global following.
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I like being called a fanatical global following.
If BGG is a fanatical following, I wonder what that makes us? Crazy stalkers?
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http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-08/20/goko-launch-problems
One tidbit I hadn't seen yet: DXV confirmed Goko has a 5-year exclusive contract to Dominion.
The article also says "special individual cards exclusive to Goko are planned", which I believe DXV has elsewhere confirmed to be false.
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One tidbit I hadn't seen yet: DXV confirmed Goko has a 5-year exclusive contract to Dominion.
That doesn't sound like me. I like to be specific, and that would be some noticeable rounding there.
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The article also says "special individual cards exclusive to Goko are planned", which I believe DXV has elsewhere confirmed to be false.
There are zero exclusive cards planned at this time.
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One tidbit I hadn't seen yet: DXV confirmed Goko has a 5-year exclusive contract to Dominion.
That doesn't sound like me. I like to be specific, and that would be some noticeable rounding there.
Yeah I guess I should have put that in quotes, not presented it as a statement of fact.
Here's the paragraph from the article:
"Dominion creator Donald X. Vaccarino has confirmed that Goko's licence to his game is a five-year exclusive deal. One of the most commonly-cited fears on Board Game Geek and other forums is that many or most of Goko's vast portfolio of licences might be similarly exclusive. Just as the smartphone and tablet explosion is speeding the move of board games into digital formats, many cherished brands might be tied to Goko for an uncertain length of time."
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One tidbit I hadn't seen yet: DXV confirmed Goko has a 5-year exclusive contract to Dominion.
That doesn't sound like me. I like to be specific, and that would be some noticeable rounding there.
I didn't remember seeing it either. I'm curious to know if that's from launch, or from signing of contract.
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"Dominion creator Donald X. Vaccarino has confirmed that Goko's licence to his game is a five-year exclusive deal. One of the most commonly-cited fears on Board Game Geek and other forums is that many or most of Goko's vast portfolio of licences might be similarly exclusive. Just as the smartphone and tablet explosion is speeding the move of board games into digital formats, many cherished brands might be tied to Goko for an uncertain length of time."
Yeah so this is acting like yesterday they contacted me and I said oh yes etc. No-one has done any such thing. In any case I wouldn't be speculating as to what their contract with Jay says, which I haven't seen - for all I know it could be shorter. What I do know is that their contract can't meaningfully extend past my contract with Jay, and that their contract postdates mine.
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http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-08/20/goko-launch-problems
One tidbit I hadn't seen yet: DXV confirmed Goko has a 5-year exclusive contract to Dominion.
I saw Jay from RGG confirm that over on BGG.
Link?
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http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-08/20/goko-launch-problems
One tidbit I hadn't seen yet: DXV confirmed Goko has a 5-year exclusive contract to Dominion.
I saw Jay from RGG confirm that over on BGG.
Link?
I just scanned through his contributions on the site and didn't see it - but I could be mistaken.
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I hadn't really thought of Goko as a competitor to Zynga, but I may be more apt to throw money at Goko now. I hate Zynga with a passion.
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When I read "competitor to Zynga," my initial thought isn't "YEAH WOO SCREW ZYNGA," it's "probably just as annoying as Zynga."
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What's.. Zynga?
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What's.. Zynga?
Ah. An innocent. Best not probe too deeply for the answer to that question.
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Oh, I see. They make pay-to-cheat, idiotic facebook games for weak minded people who request-spam you with it.
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When I read "competitor to Zynga," my initial thought isn't "YEAH WOO SCREW ZYNGA," it's "probably just as annoying as Zynga."
That thought did cross my mind, but I'm being optimistic here. At least it looks like Dominion will still be pure. I'm not entirely sure about Catan World, but it's not being touted as Settlers of Catan, so I guess I can shrug that away.
But yeah, screw Zynga.
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I hadn't really thought of Goko as a competitor to Zynga, but I may be more apt to throw money at Goko now. I hate Zynga with a passion.
See that's interesting. In my mind Goko wasn't a competitor to Zynga. Zynga makes social / casual games that are generally free to play - but have an addicting hook to get you to pay as you go. Goko (in my opinion prior to touching the beta) had the mission of making high quality implementations of high end german board games. Those are two separate markets with some overlap - other than the fact that they are both accessed via the internet.
Now - after reading about the catan mmo, and another interview which I can't find now on challenges associated with monetizing a relatively simple board game - and the solution being "put another game on top of it - and monetize that" - it's looking increasingly like this is goko goal - compete with Zynga for social / casual dollars.
I wouldn't buy Zynga dominion - even if it was just Zynga presents: Isotropic. I won't buy Goko if they act the same way, and to preemptively ward off the comments that are: Shut up and don't buy it - no-one is forcing you to - I present:
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him... The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself... All progress depends on the unreasonable man." - G.B. Shaw
If enough people make their voices heard - perhaps the product will be steered in a direction that is beneficial to everyone - gamers, goko employees, goko investors, RGG, DXV.
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When I read "competitor to Zynga," my initial thought isn't "YEAH WOO SCREW ZYNGA," it's "probably just as annoying as Zynga."
This. Oh boy, another company that wants to cash in on social compulsion, and is cowardly/insulting enough to hide the prices of its wares behind fake currency.
If you want to charge me $18.63 or something weird for a nominally-$15 game, fine. If you want to charge me more for the first game than successive ones, fine. But don't screw around with gokoins and hope I can't do math.
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http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-08/20/goko-launch-problems
One tidbit I hadn't seen yet: DXV confirmed Goko has a 5-year exclusive contract to Dominion.
I saw Jay from RGG confirm that over on BGG.
Link?
I just scanned through his contributions on the site and didn't see it - but I could be mistaken.
It's in this thread: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/12607/multi-platform-release-dominion
Someone quotes an email exchange they had with Jay. I guess they could be lying, but seems unlikely.
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A nice quote from that thread:
lancemoody wrote:
Yes, the site is back in beta and there is a sort of apology now when you first visit.
The Goko people miss the point.
This isn't just about their shockingly bad technical skills.
It's about the fact that they don't understand the core fans of these games. Indeed every facet of Goko appears to be woefully out of touch. One really has to wonder who they are imagining was going to sign on for their idea. It appears that they actually think that these hobby games might go full mainstream. It appears that they fantasize about a huge base and they have alienated the real base by not attempting to understand it in any way.
Goko is on the outside trying to figure out how to monetize us. They aren't part of the gaming community and, from the looks of it, they don't want to be part of it.
Unfortunately now it appears that several wonderful games are now in their clutches. This is a shame.
From my perspective, the only salvation for Goko is to completely rethink every aspect of their "concept". I don't think that is going to happen.
So, yes I actually do hope that the end of Goko happens sooner rather than later. I can't see how anything else might be good for those of us who love these games and want to play them and pay for them without resorting to Gokubucks or any other of Goko's tone deaf schemes.
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I'm not too concerned about Goko's monetization, honestly. They are positioning themselves as a platform for making HTML5 games, which means they can make both real games (e.g. Dominion) and lame "social" games (e.g. Catan World). Even if these run on the same platform, the monetization can be completely different.
The pricing they've chosen for Dominion seems pretty close to what I'd expect (I estimated $5 per pack, instead it's $6). It's a good pricing for serious players, because they can make enough money off fairly-serious players to afford to not do ridiculous Zynga-like schemes.
The only thing that bothers me are the Gokoins, which is a bit insulting.
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I'm not too concerned about Goko's monetization, honestly. They are positioning themselves as a platform for making HTML5 games, which means they can make both real games (e.g. Dominion) and lame "social" games (e.g. Catan World). Even if these run on the same platform, the monetization can be completely different.
The pricing they've chosen for Dominion seems pretty close to what I'd expect (I estimated $5 per pack, instead it's $6). It's a good pricing for serious players, because they can make enough money off fairly-serious players to afford to not do ridiculous Zynga-like schemes.
The only thing that bothers me are the Gokoins, which is a bit insulting.
The dominion monetization is perfectly Ok with me. $6 / pack feels high, but I just gave DougZ $100 - so clearly I'm willing to pay that much for a decent online dominion. I don't think that the funsockets implementation meets my needs, so I'm not planning on paying at this time.
My issue is that other public statements indicate that they may be monetizing other games using more offensive (to me) methods. I have no interested in supporting that even indirectly - even if I consider dominion specifically to be acceptable.
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The article also says "special individual cards exclusive to Goko are planned", which I believe DXV has elsewhere confirmed to be false.
There are zero exclusive cards planned at this time.
Oh god how I hate this. The MMO I played constantly said "we will never ever do micro-transactions" and then they said "there are no micro-transactions planned at this time" and then there were micro-transactions.
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The article also says "special individual cards exclusive to Goko are planned", which I believe DXV has elsewhere confirmed to be false.
There are zero exclusive cards planned at this time.
Oh god how I hate this. The MMO I played constantly said "we will never ever do micro-transactions" and then they said "there are no micro-transactions planned at this time" and then there were micro-transactions.
The problem is that there are absolutely zero consequences to them for lying through their teeth. Realistically pretty much no one is actually going to boycott them, and they're aiming for the casual market anyway.
We've already seen it during the aborted launch: on twitter they continually promised updates on the situation, but every actual bit of news about server status was posted here first.
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The article also says "special individual cards exclusive to Goko are planned", which I believe DXV has elsewhere confirmed to be false.
There are zero exclusive cards planned at this time.
Oh god how I hate this. The MMO I played constantly said "we will never ever do micro-transactions" and then they said "there are no micro-transactions planned at this time" and then there were micro-transactions.
Donald hasn't said 'there will never ever be exclusive cards'; <a href="http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=4080.msg92232#msg92232">he has said</a> 'there will never ever be exclusive cards without my permission, but I might consider designing a Goko-exclusive card at some time in the future if I think of a good idea for one.'
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Donald hasn't said 'there will never ever be exclusive cards'; <a href="http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=4080.msg92232#msg92232">he has said</a> 'there will never ever be exclusive cards without my permission, but I might consider designing a Goko-exclusive card at some time in the future if I think of a good idea for one.'
"...provided it was something that couldn't be done irl."
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Such as:
Transverse universe- $8
Play a game of Age of Empires II with all the players. If you win:
If you got to the dark age, gain two estates.
If you got to the feudal age, gain two duchies.
If you got to the castle age, gain two provinces.
If you got to the imperial age, gain two colonies.
Trash this card.
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Such as:
Transverse universe- $8
Play a game of Age of Empires II with all the players. If you win:
If you got to the dark age, gain two estates.
If you got to the feudal age, gain two duchies.
If you got to the castle age, gain two provinces.
If you got to the imperial age, gain two colonies.
Trash this card.
Which difficulty? I've never been able to master the most difficult one.
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"...provided it was something that couldn't be done irl."
To me, that is the very exciting. There is bookkeeping you just cant efficiently do in a physical game. Take cares like Pirate Ship, what if cards like that were more powerful but the counters were tied to each unique instance of that card. Lots of cool possibilities... :)
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"...provided it was something that couldn't be done irl."
To me, that is the very exciting. There is bookkeeping you just cant efficiently do in a physical game. Take cares like Pirate Ship, what if cards like that were more powerful but the counters were tied to each unique instance of that card. Lots of cool possibilities... :)
Nonono.. don't you know it's cheating if you can't keep track in your head?
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.
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You could also create fluid cards.
Roving Village - $4
+1 card
+2 actions
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When you draw this card, it gains one of the following at random: (1) +1 buy (2) You may trash this card immediately. If you do +$2. (3) At the start of Clean-up, if you have this and no more than one other Action card in play, you may put this on top of your deck.
(Other villages are not as conducive to the wording, but it could essentially be any $4 village.)
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I'm not too concerned about Goko's monetization, honestly. They are positioning themselves as a platform for making HTML5 games, which means they can make both real games (e.g. Dominion) and lame "social" games (e.g. Catan World). Even if these run on the same platform, the monetization can be completely different.
The pricing they've chosen for Dominion seems pretty close to what I'd expect (I estimated $5 per pack, instead it's $6). It's a good pricing for serious players, because they can make enough money off fairly-serious players to afford to not do ridiculous Zynga-like schemes.
The only thing that bothers me are the Gokoins, which is a bit insulting.
1) Have they posted the monetization system somewhere or is that info just relayed by people that were in the Goko beta?
2) Zynga is hated for a lot of reasons. Most of them are fair (massive spam, blatant copying), but some are not. Not everyone likes free-to-play games, but they are here to stay and are going to be a bigger part of gaming as time goes on.
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I'm not too concerned about Goko's monetization, honestly. They are positioning themselves as a platform for making HTML5 games, which means they can make both real games (e.g. Dominion) and lame "social" games (e.g. Catan World). Even if these run on the same platform, the monetization can be completely different.
The pricing they've chosen for Dominion seems pretty close to what I'd expect (I estimated $5 per pack, instead it's $6). It's a good pricing for serious players, because they can make enough money off fairly-serious players to afford to not do ridiculous Zynga-like schemes.
The only thing that bothers me are the Gokoins, which is a bit insulting.
1) Have they posted the monetization system somewhere or is that info just relayed by people that were in the Goko beta?
2) Zynga is hated for a lot of reasons. Most of them are fair (massive spam, blatant copying), but some are not. Not everyone likes free-to-play games, but they are here to stay and are going to be a bigger part of gaming as time goes on.
1) The beta doesn't tell you anything about monetization. What's known is from people who managed to register and login during the launch attempt, at least for expansion pricing. As for zaps, I think that's mostly speculation (zaps will exist, but no one knows for sure how you get them).
2) There are lots of different varieties of free-to-play models, some I like and some I don't.
My favourite kind is essentially the same as the old shareware model: you get a substantial portion of the game for free, then seamlessly pay money to unlock the other portions. That's what Goko is doing for multiplayer Dominion. I like this model because it has no impact on gameplay and you get to try out a game before dropping money on it.
It's also fine if you pay money for cosmetic changes. This is what Valve is doing for TF2, right? (I don't play TF2.) Again, there is no impact on gameplay. I doubt there are many games that can make enough money this way, but if it works, sure, go for it.
I also have no issue with showing ads that can be disabled by paying money. I'll try it, and if I like it, I'll pay the money to turn ads off. People who don't want to pay can still play, and the creator will still make money from the ads. Everybody wins.
Where I start finding issue with FTP is when it becomes pay-to-win, for two reasons. In a multiplayer game, it puts one player at an advantage for spending more money, which seems obviously bad (although there are enough people who enjoy MtG that clearly not everyone agrees!). In a singleplayer game, it encourages the game developer to make progress too slow if you don't spend money, so that you are encouraged to spend money just to get a decent experience in the game--the opposite of good game design.
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I'm not too concerned about Goko's monetization, honestly. They are positioning themselves as a platform for making HTML5 games, which means they can make both real games (e.g. Dominion) and lame "social" games (e.g. Catan World). Even if these run on the same platform, the monetization can be completely different.
The pricing they've chosen for Dominion seems pretty close to what I'd expect (I estimated $5 per pack, instead it's $6). It's a good pricing for serious players, because they can make enough money off fairly-serious players to afford to not do ridiculous Zynga-like schemes.
The only thing that bothers me are the Gokoins, which is a bit insulting.
1) Have they posted the monetization system somewhere or is that info just relayed by people that were in the Goko beta?
2) Zynga is hated for a lot of reasons. Most of them are fair (massive spam, blatant copying), but some are not. Not everyone likes free-to-play games, but they are here to stay and are going to be a bigger part of gaming as time goes on.
1) The beta doesn't tell you anything about monetization. What's known is from people who managed to register and login during the launch attempt, at least for expansion pricing. As for zaps, I think that's mostly speculation (zaps will exist, but no one knows for sure how you get them).
2) There are lots of different varieties of free-to-play models, some I like and some I don't.
My favourite kind is essentially the same as the old shareware model: you get a substantial portion of the game for free, then seamlessly pay money to unlock the other portions. That's what Goko is doing for multiplayer Dominion. I like this model because it has no impact on gameplay and you get to try out a game before dropping money on it.
It's also fine if you pay money for cosmetic changes. This is what Valve is doing for TF2, right? (I don't play TF2.) Again, there is no impact on gameplay. I doubt there are many games that can make enough money this way, but if it works, sure, go for it.
I also have no issue with showing ads that can be disabled by paying money. I'll try it, and if I like it, I'll pay the money to turn ads off. People who don't want to pay can still play, and the creator will still make money from the ads. Everybody wins.
Where I start finding issue with FTP is when it becomes pay-to-win, for two reasons. In a multiplayer game, it puts one player at an advantage for spending more money, which seems obviously bad (although there are enough people who enjoy MtG that clearly not everyone agrees!). In a singleplayer game, it encourages the game developer to make progress too slow if you don't spend money, so that you are encouraged to spend money just to get a decent experience in the game--the opposite of good game design.
Interesting, cant wait to see it.
I am not sure a standard F2P CCG model will work well for Dominion, but I will withhold judgement till I can get in there and see it. I envisioned a pay-by-set system with some cosmetic stuff on top, but the problem with that is you get to a point where you tell the hardcore players to stop spending money. That is counter to typical F2P thinking, but just like most tower defense games (just to name another genre), I dont think microtransactions are the way to go.
Beyond that though, I personally have no issue with pay-to-win, if its done right. I am probably biased because I am in the industry and I have been one of those players that payed to win on other online games. I have played MTG since '95 and I wouldnt say that was your standard F2P or pay-to-win, its a game where a good strategy and knowledge of the rules will overcome someone that has a lot of great cards but not a great idea of how to play them. I suspect that will be the case in Dominion also. IMO, that is a sign of a well designed game.
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MtG is not really a pay to win. Once you have 4 of every card (or even just 4 of every tournament-standard card) there is no incentive to spend any more money. Even though it is quite an expensive hobby, at least it is quantifiably expensive from the outset.
In fact in many ways it is more like the browser games of 5 years ago, where you could play a cut-down version for free, but if you subscribed for a nominal fee per month (usually worked out to about $5), you gained access to the whole game. Free players could not really compete with subscribers, but any subscriber could compete with any other subscriber on an equal footing. I really liked this model and was more than happy to pay a monthly fee for up to five games at once at one point.
But then suddenly a few years ago the entire industry cottoned onto microtransactions. This was much worse for the gamer, firstly because it generally worked out more expensive to get anywhere near competitive and secondly because no matter how much you spent, someone else could always spend more and beat you. Since then I have pretty much stopped spending money on browser games altogether, making it a lose/lose for everyone. Unfortunately there are enough players out there willing to spend large amounts of money to be the best at a game that the business model isn't going anywhere any time soon. After all, you're better off having 100 players spending $150 per month than 2500 players paying $5 per month
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More and more MMO's arenow also going the FTP model with microtransactions as they have realised they cannot cope with big industry behemoths on subscriber numbers.
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More and more MMO's arenow also going the FTP model with microtransactions as they have realised they cannot cope with big industry behemoths on subscriber numbers.
"behemoths" meaning WoW and only WoW. A friggin ten year old game that has stripped out most of its original game mechanics, where the writing is basically assembled by random phrases at this point, and developers are obviously exhausted and bored and waiting for people to go somewhere else so they can work on something interesting. Yet no company out there can summon the basic competence and innovation to unseat it.
Sorry, offtopic.
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More and more MMO's arenow also going the FTP model with microtransactions as they have realised they cannot cope with big industry behemoths on subscriber numbers.
"behemoths" meaning WoW and only WoW. A friggin ten year old game that has stripped out most of its original game mechanics, where the writing is basically assembled by random phrases at this point, and developers are obviously exhausted and bored and waiting for people to go somewhere else so they can work on something interesting. Yet no company out there can summon the basic competence and innovation to unseat it.
No, that can't be. GC always tells how cool and exciting all this new stuff is...
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More and more MMO's arenow also going the FTP model with microtransactions as they have realised they cannot cope with big industry behemoths on subscriber numbers.
"behemoths" meaning WoW and only WoW. A friggin ten year old game that has stripped out most of its original game mechanics, where the writing is basically assembled by random phrases at this point, and developers are obviously exhausted and bored and waiting for people to go somewhere else so they can work on something interesting. Yet no company out there can summon the basic competence and innovation to unseat it.
Sorry, offtopic.
Well yes, mainly WOW
But I'm sure there are still a few others with over 1m paid subscribers a month (Star Wars? Lineage?). Much less than there was though as they have realised FTP and micros are the way to go!
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More and more MMO's arenow also going the FTP model with microtransactions as they have realised they cannot cope with big industry behemoths on subscriber numbers.
"behemoths" meaning WoW and only WoW. A friggin ten year old game that has stripped out most of its original game mechanics, where the writing is basically assembled by random phrases at this point, and developers are obviously exhausted and bored and waiting for people to go somewhere else so they can work on something interesting. Yet no company out there can summon the basic competence and innovation to unseat it.
Sorry, offtopic.
Man, I for one am somewhat excited about Pandaria.
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More and more MMO's arenow also going the FTP model with microtransactions as they have realised they cannot cope with big industry behemoths on subscriber numbers.
"behemoths" meaning WoW and only WoW. A friggin ten year old game that has stripped out most of its original game mechanics, where the writing is basically assembled by random phrases at this point, and developers are obviously exhausted and bored and waiting for people to go somewhere else so they can work on something interesting. Yet no company out there can summon the basic competence and innovation to unseat it.
Sorry, offtopic.
Man, I for one am somewhat excited about Pandaria.
I love the pokemon petbattle game myself. Keeps me awake at nights thinking what an innovation it is!
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I think the licensing of the game to a third party whose interests aren't necessarily aligned with RGG or DVX is a big problem will be difficult or impossible to solve.
If the digital version was totally owned by RGG (either made by an in-house team, or outsourced to another company doing WFH), then some of the costs of the game could be offset by converting digital players into physical players. Goku does not get money from real physical sales of the game (as far as we know, if they do then disregard the rest of this) so they have to offset all their costs through the digital version. This leads to annoying microtransactions and also probably means they are not as invested in making the digital version as good as it could possibly be (once they have your money, they don't care if you end up being disappointed whereas in RGG-owned scenario they want you to really love the digital version so much that you end up going and buying a physical copy).
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More and more MMO's arenow also going the FTP model with microtransactions as they have realised they cannot cope with big industry behemoths on subscriber numbers.
"behemoths" meaning WoW and only WoW. A friggin ten year old game that has stripped out most of its original game mechanics, where the writing is basically assembled by random phrases at this point, and developers are obviously exhausted and bored and waiting for people to go somewhere else so they can work on something interesting. Yet no company out there can summon the basic competence and innovation to unseat it.
Sorry, offtopic.
Well yes, mainly WOW
But I'm sure there are still a few others with over 1m paid subscribers a month (Star Wars? Lineage?). Much less than there was though as they have realised FTP and micros are the way to go!
Actually, Star Wars has now shifted to offering its service for free with micro-transactions. Happened about a week ago.
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More and more MMO's arenow also going the FTP model with microtransactions as they have realised they cannot cope with big industry behemoths on subscriber numbers.
"behemoths" meaning WoW and only WoW.
And Runescape
While it has introduced fringe microtransactions, it is still fundamentally a subscriber model and hopefully will remain so (players aren't that optimistic).
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While it has introduced fringe microtransactions, it is still fundamentally a subscriber model and hopefully will remain so (players aren't that optimistic).
This is what I was originally referring to actually. And if by "aren't that optimistic" you mean "quit, gave out 400M and fled before it went full out micro", then yes. ::)
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More and more MMO's arenow also going the FTP model with microtransactions as they have realised they cannot cope with big industry behemoths on subscriber numbers.
"behemoths" meaning WoW and only WoW. A friggin ten year old game that has stripped out most of its original game mechanics, where the writing is basically assembled by random phrases at this point, and developers are obviously exhausted and bored and waiting for people to go somewhere else so they can work on something interesting. Yet no company out there can summon the basic competence and innovation to unseat it.
Sorry, offtopic.
*cough* GUILD WARS 2 *cough*
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More and more MMO's arenow also going the FTP model with microtransactions as they have realised they cannot cope with big industry behemoths on subscriber numbers.
"behemoths" meaning WoW and only WoW. A friggin ten year old game that has stripped out most of its original game mechanics, where the writing is basically assembled by random phrases at this point, and developers are obviously exhausted and bored and waiting for people to go somewhere else so they can work on something interesting. Yet no company out there can summon the basic competence and innovation to unseat it.
Sorry, offtopic.
*cough* GUILD WARS 2 *cough*
Tell me in a year when GW2 and WOW each have 5M subscribers. Heck, at least wait until NCSoft has released the game. Every new MMO for the last five years has been hailed as the WOW-killer. Conan, LOTRO, Rift, TOR, etc.
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More and more MMO's arenow also going the FTP model with microtransactions as they have realised they cannot cope with big industry behemoths on subscriber numbers.
"behemoths" meaning WoW and only WoW. A friggin ten year old game that has stripped out most of its original game mechanics, where the writing is basically assembled by random phrases at this point, and developers are obviously exhausted and bored and waiting for people to go somewhere else so they can work on something interesting. Yet no company out there can summon the basic competence and innovation to unseat it.
Sorry, offtopic.
*cough* GUILD WARS 2 *cough*
Tell me in a year when GW2 and WOW each have 5M subscribers. Heck, at least wait until NCSoft has released the game. Every new MMO for the last five years has been hailed as the WOW-killer. Conan, LOTRO, Rift, TOR, etc.
Except Guild Wars 2 actually might be the WoW-killer. Guild Wars 1 proved that you can have a financially successful MMO without a subscription fee. It's getting a lot of good press, and drumming up a lot of excitement.
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I'm happily playing GW2 right now and it's accessable, reasonably challenging and fun. And the fact that it doesn't require a subscription commitment makes it pretty painless for WoWaholics to try. It's made by guys who really know how to design games - who are knowledgeable about how it's done elsewhere but who don't mindlessly mimic successful formulae - and it shows in a lot of small and big ways.
I am a bit concerned about its staying power, though.
-You essentially get all of your abilities - save for some very long cooldowns - within the first few hours. There's a lot of abilities (25ish that you can have equipped, 75ish for your class total), but the "shape" and general strategy of your character won't change over time like it does in WoW.
-Areas feel smaller than WoW's. Part of this is how much more convenient everything is - you're just running around filling nodes instead of doing questlines, so there's less of a sense of direction and place.
-There's no mana bar or equivalent. Abilities cost nothing to use. They have cooldowns - some of which are very significant - but taking the resource-management dimension out of the game makes it a bit flatter. I don't have the feeling of wanting to hunker over a torn-out piece of paper, theorycrafting my character.
I'm not sure that the GW2 guys are even *aiming* to dethrone WoW. Their business model seems not to be the subscription MMO's call of "Stay awhile. Stay FOREVER!" but instead "Here's a bunch of content for you. Once you're done, grats! Get lost. Come back when we have more ready."