MMOs of 2009, Console MMOs and Rules of Healing
I read a couple of really good blog posts recently that I highly recommend:
From Spinksville: You cant heal stupidity!
and
From Bio Break: The Long, Hard Road to Console MMOs
and
From Elder Game: 2009: A year of Shitty MMOs.
For reference, you might find this post from Bio Break really useful: MMO Timeline. It includes dates of every major MMO’s release, expansions, and in some cases, cancellations.
Read them, enjoy, and feel free to share your comments there and/or here.
On console mmos: It’s not actually hardware limitations nor input device issues that are holding these up. For some reason, Microsoft has some sort of policy/rule that is preventing MMO devs from getting on board, and MS is being stubborn about changing it. Though nobody has ever said specifically what it is, Funcom, Square, and Cryptic have all hinted at it. I can see MS not worrying too much about missing out on Age of Conan and Champions Online, but handing Final Fantasy 14 to Sony on a silver platter seems INCREDIBLY stupid to me. Oddly Dust 514 seems to be headed to Xbox, I wonder what’s the difference there.
As far as input devices go, the controller is fine for mmos. I used to PVP in CoH on an xbox controller, and I definitely didn’t feel like I was at a disadvantage. All it takes is a good tab targetting system, and developers realising that characters don’t need 30+ combat abilities.
What sort of policy at Microsoft? I’ve never heard about that. Is it because they want all their online games to be charged through XBOX Live, and don’t want people to pay subscriptions to other companies?
Input: A console MMO fails at chat, and voice is not a good substitute for a whole host of reasons. Maybe I should write about that specifically as a topic.
I’ll see if I can dig you up a link as far as the policy thing goes, most likely the Square comment, as it’s the most recent one.
As far as text chatting goes, the xbox has a miniature keyboard peripheral that attaches to the controller for text chatting. It’s larger than what most people type out text messages on phones. Microsoft should include some auto complete features and the like to make it work better. Or, alternatively, just do it like Final Fantasy 11 does.
Here you go, covers both Square and Cryptic:
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3175808
I’ve seen similar reports to what Outsider posted. I really think one of the biggest issues with XBOX/Microsoft in particular is the whole patching issue and general consistency of the user experience. MMOs tend to change a great deal after launch….and even the good launches tend to be incredibly buggy compared to the average console game.
Given how MMOs tend to be at launch even with a big budget/good team…even if they are console suitable it would probably be best to wait 6 months to a year after launch to port it. Then theoretically the major bugs should be out, the direction of the game set and the community already established.