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Mass Effect (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Cocaloch
- Start date
Too bad they sold out to EA 
Lessens my hopes of the new Star Wars MMO being innovative and playable instead of just another pander-to-the-masses wow-esque setup. Who knows though... maybe their devs will be able to stand up to the pressure of the suits trying to make them conform to every focus test EA runs.
Lessens my hopes of the new Star Wars MMO being innovative and playable instead of just another pander-to-the-masses wow-esque setup. Who knows though... maybe their devs will be able to stand up to the pressure of the suits trying to make them conform to every focus test EA runs.
Too bad they sold out to EA
I hate this kind of catch-all, sweeping statement post. pms
How was WoW not innovative in the first place?
It took the MMORPG scene, which consisted primarily of tedious grindfests, and made it easily accessible to anyone who's interested. You can log in, play for only half an hour, and log off feeling you actually did some progress. Quests give some actual rewards, not a mushroom stamp to the face and a NPC giving you two coppers at level 60.
On the other hand, it took end game experience, which previously consisted primarily of pumping out mod rods, complete heal rotations and often zerg rushes, and made it all into complex, involved fights with interesting strategy. Its solid instancing system removed the EQ element of uberguilds cockblocking content from people who don't feel like being online 12 hours a day.
For those who like to invest time to have some recognition in the game, there's also plenty of available, but optional grinds for special rewards. The epic mount, back in the beginning of the game, is one. The fact that they later made it easier for people to get these mounts is not dumbing down the game, it's keeping it evolving. Each time they made something easier to obtain, they added a new objective which was as hard to obtain. Epic mounts replaced by PvP mounts. High Warlord/Grand Marshal status replaced by Arena rankings.
Truth of the matter is, WoW was and still is very innovative in that it has a bit of everything for every kind of gamer. That's not "pandering to the masses", that's damn good design. And it's just not about Blizzard's fame either, or the game's growth would've died out after the first few months, once all the brand fans tried it out and quit. No, it had something to base itself on to propel subscriptions to millions.
Before you think about saying it, I certainly am not a fangirl. As a matter of fact, I quit the game some months ago. I played since release, experienced the casual content, the end-game content, being the first Gnome with an Elekk, rolling a dozen alts and once I figured I had gotten everything I could out of the game, I quit, and that's that. It doesn't make me think any less of the fun I had while I did play.
BioWare did not "sell out" and their MMOG is not henceforth doomed to fail.
No matter how you cut it, EA is wildly successful. Their sports franchises might not be wildly innovative, but honestly, what do you expect? They can't go and change the rules of the sports games they're making. The best they can do is make a release with an up to date roster, changed rules, learn from their previous games' flaws gameplay wise and try to make it a bit prettier each time.
Guess what, it's working. EA games are the pinnacle of casual gaming, and the foremost reason that so many of their games might seem subpar is that they invest in so many different studios that you have to expect some of them to be misses. But a lot of their published games are very good. I'm thinking of The Sims 2, Battlefield 1942/2, Black & White, Dungeon Keeper 2, Command & Conquer 3, just to name a few. Crysis, which is so eagerly touted and awaited, was also made by a studio in cooperation with EA, and believe me, Crytek took their sweet time pushing out their game & engine.
By buying so many little studios, it's expected for them to have some misses. But they still get quite a few good ones. And they want some good ones in the MMOG field, which is why they got their hands on Mythic for a big name Fantasy MMOG, and now BioWare for a sci-fi MMOG along with more single player RPGs.
EA has nothing when it comes to RPGs/MMORPGs, and it'd be extremely arrogant or ill-willed to assume they don't know it very well themselves. To take a forceful hand in companies that are already well-established in that field would be tantamount to financial suicide, and no matter what conspiracy theorists might say, no corporation is going to make an investment just to ruin it themselves. Especially one that comes with a $860 million price tag.
In short, don't make sweeping statements based entirely on one subset of a publisher's games, it's just incredibly irritating and uninformed.
For a game that so many people tout as casual friendly, over and over, WoW is not at all casual friendly. It takes a very small amount of time to hit the level cap, and then once you do hit the level cap, if you want to realistically advance your character, you are FORCED to group, and FORCED to run instances. Most of which, especially pre TBC, could take 2-3 hours, and before the major instance nerfs, took 3+. (remember Scholo at launch time? Ouch, lol. At least it was memorable then though... when it was HARD and the loot was bad.)
Raids take SCHEDULING time to play the game. People talk about pop in and out and all this. WoW is the first MMO where I've ever felt compelled to SCHEDULE my playtime several nights a week in order to get anything out of it. Every other MMO I might have a scheduled event once every two weeks... once a week at most. Other than that I could truly come and go as my moods dictated without feeling that I was letting 39 or 24 or 9 other people down.
And WoW was not innovative. There were pretty much no ideas that the WoW dev staff came up with on their own. They just took appealing features from other games and put them all in one package. Then they continued to play to the lowest common denominator to keep raising subs, over and over and over. Ok-- here's innovative... a company that boasts of over 8 million subscribers... 15 dollars a month, won't supply the bandwidth to carry patches on $120 mil a month and makes gamers P2P the patches. There's their innovation. Thanks a lot Blizz!
Quite frankly, EA is a big time publisher. EA publishes more for quantity than quality from what I can tell, as do most big time publishers. They aren't interested in niche markets, they're interested in big chunks. And if watering down all areas of a game to satiate the masses is what it takes, they'll do it, and they'll pressure the developers that work for their company to do it. And that is why I worry about Bioware getting bought out by them.
I'm not in it to be a WoW hater. I had my good times in WoW too, although almost all of the memorable ones came pre-BG patch and pre-"improvements." I swear popularity, or the changes they made to increase popularity, of WoW hurt it.
I do hate what WoW is doing and has done to the industry though, and that's part WoW, but mostly the investors who's main interest in the genre is not the games, but the money, and the big $$ signs that lit up in their eyes when they saw what happened with WoW. Now we'll be stuck in a rut of games made for mass appeal rather than niche games. At what point does a profitable game become so unappealing to a publisher? A 500k subscriber base makes a game plenty profitable. Shit, for 500k subscribers, they used to even host the patches!! But now we will be stuck with every game house looking to force their devs to pander to the mass ineptitude of the WoW gamer who says "But that's too hard!" "I don't wanna lose anything when I die! I only want to win all the time!" "How do you thottbot in this game? This takes too long!"
Feh.
Case in point:
http://worldofwarcraft.com/downloads/movies.html
Blizz has the market all locked up. They have the MONSTERS share of the market. But they're putting out another national ad campaign. WHY?? God WHY? Hire another half dozen devs. Hire 20 GM/QA/CSR people. Answer more tickets. Ban more farmers. Design a new instance. Or at least a couple new BG maps. Put that money to use to improve the game instead of marketing. WHY could they possibly need more marketing? It's not about the game for big companies like that (even though Blizz has historically been much, much better than most) It's about the almighty dollar at the end of the road.
Raids take SCHEDULING time to play the game. People talk about pop in and out and all this. WoW is the first MMO where I've ever felt compelled to SCHEDULE my playtime several nights a week in order to get anything out of it. Every other MMO I might have a scheduled event once every two weeks... once a week at most. Other than that I could truly come and go as my moods dictated without feeling that I was letting 39 or 24 or 9 other people down.
And WoW was not innovative. There were pretty much no ideas that the WoW dev staff came up with on their own. They just took appealing features from other games and put them all in one package. Then they continued to play to the lowest common denominator to keep raising subs, over and over and over. Ok-- here's innovative... a company that boasts of over 8 million subscribers... 15 dollars a month, won't supply the bandwidth to carry patches on $120 mil a month and makes gamers P2P the patches. There's their innovation. Thanks a lot Blizz!
Quite frankly, EA is a big time publisher. EA publishes more for quantity than quality from what I can tell, as do most big time publishers. They aren't interested in niche markets, they're interested in big chunks. And if watering down all areas of a game to satiate the masses is what it takes, they'll do it, and they'll pressure the developers that work for their company to do it. And that is why I worry about Bioware getting bought out by them.
I'm not in it to be a WoW hater. I had my good times in WoW too, although almost all of the memorable ones came pre-BG patch and pre-"improvements." I swear popularity, or the changes they made to increase popularity, of WoW hurt it.
I do hate what WoW is doing and has done to the industry though, and that's part WoW, but mostly the investors who's main interest in the genre is not the games, but the money, and the big $$ signs that lit up in their eyes when they saw what happened with WoW. Now we'll be stuck in a rut of games made for mass appeal rather than niche games. At what point does a profitable game become so unappealing to a publisher? A 500k subscriber base makes a game plenty profitable. Shit, for 500k subscribers, they used to even host the patches!! But now we will be stuck with every game house looking to force their devs to pander to the mass ineptitude of the WoW gamer who says "But that's too hard!" "I don't wanna lose anything when I die! I only want to win all the time!" "How do you thottbot in this game? This takes too long!"
Feh.
Case in point:
http://worldofwarcraft.com/downloads/movies.html
Blizz has the market all locked up. They have the MONSTERS share of the market. But they're putting out another national ad campaign. WHY?? God WHY? Hire another half dozen devs. Hire 20 GM/QA/CSR people. Answer more tickets. Ban more farmers. Design a new instance. Or at least a couple new BG maps. Put that money to use to improve the game instead of marketing. WHY could they possibly need more marketing? It's not about the game for big companies like that (even though Blizz has historically been much, much better than most) It's about the almighty dollar at the end of the road.