Ignacius

I'd ask how that is "dominance"? If there are thousands of F2P games and none of them are anywhere near being the quality cash cows of WoW, XIV, EVE, and so on, then are they really dominating? It just seems like there are less subscription-based MMORPGs because it's a really hard model to keep up. People might buy a bunch of F2P games (if they even need to) play them for a month, and then stop. Those games don't even have a reliable metric for showing active players and accounts. As far as the numbers I've seen, the full sales populations of most games don't even scrape the 500,000 dollar bottom of EVE's subscriptions, and EVE is a comparatively small subscription MMORPG compared to FFXIV (1.8 million) and everyone pales in comparison to WoW (last I heard, their lowest subs in almost a decade at 7.8 million). There are just a few F2P games with more sales than some of those subscription games, but how many people are actively playing them? I'd say that, with as many F2P games as there are, it's because their development cycle favors quantity over quality. They don't guide or dominate the discussion because their model for making money is either based on straight-up sales (so they release a ton of expansions and make you pay for development directly) or based on microtransactions (the dreaded P2W). Taken as a small and exclusive group, EVE, WoW, and Final Fantasy are very different games. Actually, beta testing Wildstar, I'm suddenly struck by how different Wildstar and XIV are from WoW. Maybe it's just become a catch phrase so people call everything a WoW-clone, but the only things they really have in common are that they are MMORPGs and have elements like getting quests, an action bar, a health pool, factions, things of that nature. EVE Online has all of those things; nobody would call EVE a WoW clone, but the only things it doesn't have in common with those games is a WASD control scheme, which predates even MMORPGs. Other than that, the four major subscription games have wildly different settings, focuses, paces, combat styles, loot, focus, development, graphics. I guess, having read about how these games are WoW-clones, I kind of took it for granted. They are really wildly different. Now, there are games out there that are clones of these titles and they certainly ripped ideas off of other, less successful games (WoW is ironic as everyone thinks the industry is cloning WoW, when WoW seems to just as often absorb all the good ideas bouncing around in the MMORPG stratosphere), but really those four games are wildly different except matters of genre. Really, deviations from those genre staples haven't necessarily been good ideas. It just hit me how different the games are, with WoW's almost instantaneous statistical approach, Wildstar's almost chaotic melee of elements, XIV's careful and ponderous play, and EVE's ambiguity and long-range planning, the subscription games are, for their part, very different from each other. I think, of all subscription games that are in the pipeline and have come before, Wildstar will probably have the best chance to carve out a spot in the sun because it does kind of carve out a niche that people weren't paying for monthly already. That's probably why the previous generation of subscription MMORPGs that preceded XIV and Wildstar but came after WoW and EVE went F2P. They were trying to re-make WoW too closely and trying to replicate that success too minutely, especially when a subscription model favors the original developer. I think the new generation of subscription games, XIV, Wildstar, et al., are doing their best not to just take WoW and improve on it, but to differentiate themselves in tone, mechanics, and structure. It makes me a little more hopeful. I should say I may be biting on Wildstar too soon, but playing the beta, I'm really impressed by the game. A LOT more impressed than I thought I'd be.

Is F2P dominating the market? Last I heard, even after hemorrhaging players due to lack of content, WoW still had about 7-8 million active accounts and is still the largest MMORPG on the planet. Subscription MMORPGs have to keep it real, since you can judge sub numbers but F2P MMOs don't usually keep records of how many accounts are regularly active (mostly because it doesn't matter to them, they already made their money on the game sale and only need to keep track of RM transactions. Is there a F2P game with an active population like that? I'll say this, it's not just any Tom, Dick, and Harry developer that can make a successful subscription MMORPG. You have to continue to develop the game at a high level to make the sub money worth it. Most companies just don't have that kind of ability.

You'd be surprised. From what I've seen in various communities, there seems to be a subset of MMO "nomads" who are constantly moving on to the next New Shiny Game, whatever that happens to be, regardless of the game's originality. As baffling as it may be, they're out there. That is baffling. Maybe I'm too far behind the times; I only just took on another game other than WoW last year. All I know now is that as much as I thought I played WoW because I'm stodgy. What I've learned is that I played because there really aren't any better games out there a decade later. Actually, I'm kind of interested to see how FFXIV and Wildstar play out over time. I don't know that they're better yet, but WoW may finally be so antiquated that it will finally die of attrition. Not that I haven't already pre-ordered Warlords to see what they're doing. It's still Blizzard. It's just a little disappointing that we haven't gotten anything that's 100% upfront better than World of Warcraft in ten years. I mean, Doom 3 released that year. FFXI got the Chains of Promathia expansion that year. FABLE released that year. I mean, all credit to Blizzard for being a great developer, but in ten years, if we haven't had a better game, that's as damning an indictment of the industry as we could ever have.

Could you be a bit more descriptive? The video doesn't make it look that much different than what I'd expect from an MMORPG these days, especially a Korean one. Is the difference in the mechanics? No, sorry, I was being sarcastic. That game is a huge copy of Tera, with bits taken from Aion as well. The video is interesting because you can see elins. People who played Tera will know right away; you only have to take a look at the game's name and font used ^^; It's so blatant I don't even know what Bluehole studio is doing while other Korean company rip their contents. My bad. I actually have had so many conversations about MMORPGs with people who seem to develop bulletproof love for games that are derivative or not very good in objective criticism (not really here, people here seem to care a bit more) so my first reaction to that is that people aren't being sarcastic, they're being real. That, and I never played Tera. I've just seen enough MMORPGs to know what they look like now. When you think about it, it's almost shocking that people would make MMORPGs so derivative of another game. MMORPGs, by definition, tend to involve a lot of time investment, so people aren't going to leave an MMO for one or two features that will be added in their game in the future. They also take so much money to develop and maintain, each should be a flagship franchise.

What's great is that I imagine some game designer for Carbine suddenly started crying, knowing how often his creation would be killed by a stun/heavy-attack (the way I've been doing it on my warrior!) and he just gave the same thing to his character. Tears streaming down his face, he screams at the imaginary players who will spend their hours killing his creation, "LET'S SEE HOW YOU LIKE IT, YOU HEARTLESS BASTARDS!"

Could you be a bit more descriptive? The video doesn't make it look that much different than what I'd expect from an MMORPG these days, especially a Korean one. Is the difference in the mechanics?

I think, to be fair, the game isn't really a comedy. It's an action game that doesn't take itself too seriously. I'd almost describe the tone as very much like one of the older PS1 or N64 3d platformers from back in the day, or an early afternoon cartoon from the heyday of Cartoon Network. Or maybe one of those action movies in the 80s or 90s. It's not a comedic story or a parody; playing the exiles story...

Meh, not really feeling it. This on the other hand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB8YqPjckIY And pretty much all of this playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vqi1EuaiSo&list=PLB4C108EB21B891B3 I guess tastes differ. Your fantasy music isn't like my fantasy music. This is what gets my blood going for a fantasy game! ArcheAge music makes me sleepy. 0L_iOnLNt9M

The sliders actually don't do much. You can crank them all the way to the minimum or the maximum and some parts will barely move. And then you have only one slider for the mouth, mouth size, that also changes the size of your jaw along with it. And once you consider that most faces are pretty unique looking (it's not so noticeable on humans and aurin, but on everyone else it kind of is), you end up with a lot of very easily recognizable clones with slightly different features. And maybe wider noses. And yes, the game is terribly optimized. I thought they'd optimize before open beta, but apparently they want the first impressions of the game to be "This game is not very well optimized". Housing in Wildstar is pretty neat. You get a FREE plot of land at level 14, and then you can dump money on it to personalize it. Each plot has a designated area for the house proper and then a bunch of 'slots' where you can place other, non-housy things. Like a garden, or a mine, or a crashed meteorite because it's cool. I think building the smallest house costs like 1 gold (which isn't much) while the biggest costs 3 platinum (and you need level 30ish or something). But most of the expenses come from furnishing the place and filling the slots. You can get furniture via quest rewards, random drops, buying them directly from your house, other players or one of the crafting professions (architecture). You can place things pretty much wherever you want, even floating in the air. Though the UI for moving furniture is pretty bad and fills your screen with a big window (the 'crate' where all your furniture is stored at) that you can't hide nor close because that spits you out of the edit mode. Overall it's pretty neat, but it's a huge gold sink. I don't think you can furnish it like you want until you are at least at cap. Unless you don't mind going bankrupt. One thing that bother me a lot in Wildstar is...actually, there's two things: repair bills, which seem way too expensive, specially if you run dungeons a lot for gear; and mobs with instant knockdowns/stuns. Though the last one has been tweaked greatly by making those mobs weaker...or at least the ones that used to wreck me over and over again. Really? I thought the sliders did too much. Hell, the chin length slider on humans can turn you into Natasha Fatale. So it's definitely more than I was expecting. In fact, I thought it was a bit much. Eye spacing slider is a little rich; I really don't need to turn my character into a chameleon. One thing I am disappointed about is the color palette choice. Of all the things, that and body sliders would be my complaints. I wanted to have neon colored hair (my reasons are my own). I can't knock the game's customization that much, though. Considering people made it sound like it had WoW-level character customization, I was pleasantly surprised. It's not the best I've ever seen, but it's definitely more than adequate, especially given their art direction. I'm also wondering about faulting their optimization; I use a custom rig. Still, you'd think things would be working a little smoother by this point. But who knows? Maybe open beta is when they decided to start measuring hardware rates so they knew how short to draw the distance. Since money's too tight to afford a new video card to go with the rest of my computer, I guess I'll have to hope they optimize really well. Crossfiring a pair of new cards in my rig would set me back a pretty decent chunk of change. Housing sounds good. Nice to have something to sink money into that doesn't cost a lot to get off the ground. We'll see how it turns out. I'm getting close to 14 on my warrior. Any word on whether you can invite people into your house or if it's FFXI level (just for you)? I haven't noticed a repair bill problem; I'm not hard up for money yet. I haven't run across a lot of instant stuns or knockbacks yet, though I can't imagine knockbacks would be too much of an issue considering the pace of the game. PVP might make that a different beast, but I've had a lot of fun rolling around in PVE making sure the peoples are in the blue cones and that I'm not in the red cones. Then again, we'll see what the later game brings. Stacking interrupts sounds like hell.

PS theme is fine (as is the Lost City theme). I hate the combat music with every fibre of my being, though, and most of the zone and city music is just utterly bland to me. I also hate the primal themes with their ridiculous electric guitar... urgh. So much of FFXIV's music is overly treble-balanced or "noisy". WildStar and ArcheAge are currently my favorite MMO soundtracks. ^^; Oh yeah? How do you feel about.... THIS TRACK! _no4p6hhyDo

I'm also in the Wildstar beta. I was going to keep it to myself until the end of the beta, but I guess I can throw in my thoughts. I guess I'm a bit more impressed with the character creation than I thought I'd be. With all the complaints about bodies and sliders, they've got a bunch for the face so you can get some customization there. Honestly, I think they'll end up with body sliders eventually since they already have them in the less important face area. I can't say I was completely disappointed, though. Maybe it's because of how low everyone made my expectations. Warrior combat is fun as Hell, though I haven't tried another class yet so that's up in the air. It's a bit like FFXIV, but a lot faster paced. You don't autolock when you run, so you have to make sure you're turned the right way. It takes a while getting the sensitivity right so that you don't overcompensate. They went the Diablo 3 route with customization where you can add different abilities to a set action bar. That also means you can't use all your abilities you unlock. We'll see if that gets annoying later. Combat's great though, already. I will say it's beta rough, though, so I hope it's a little more polished by release. You'd be amazed how that game taxes your system. I'm running a 9590 processor on a pretty much brand new component machine with 32 gigs of RAM. My video card is the oldest component, though it's still a gigabit card with a decent bus. I'm running on 1280 resolution on medium settings and the animations still aren't smooth. Which is mindblowing, because it's so stylized and you know they aren't so worried about realism. It's a lot more resource-heavy than I imagined. We're definitely, almost 100% guaranteed (they said so in an interview) going to have designated RP-PVE and RP-PVP servers. That's exciting especially for me, since I will know where to find the RPers. Also, I know sitting on chair and interactive environments was kind of up in the air for a while, but it's definitely in the beta. I don't know anything about player housing, so if anyone has some experience in it, let me know. I went explorer, so I've had some fun 3d platforming that REALLY reminds me of games like Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie. Actually, a lot of the game reminds me of a high-end, heavily graphically improved N64 game. If you ever wished you could have an N64 MMORPG, seriously try it out. The UI needs a LOT of polish. Things you need to see don't stand out on the map very well, things that do stand out on the map completely obscure where you're going. You get small icons on your screen, like the one telling you that you have tutorials you haven't read. Yes, I didn't read the tutorial about how to run. But you can't get rid of it and clicking the icon doesn't do anything; you have to open the menu to read it for it to go away. There's an icon reminding you to hit the V key to vacuum up your loot (which is good in concept) but it's not as easy as you'd think to see your loot when your enemies explode. If you happen to get too far to vacuum loot, though, that icon will NOT go away unless you go back or the loot despawns. That means you will usually miss something, then have to deal with that icon telling you that you have loot when you don't. So the UI can use serious polish. That's what I've got to report right now.

I loved Crimson Skies. I remember tearing people up with a Dust Devil. I actually have a lot of experience in stick-flight games. That's the most horrific PVP learning curve on the planet, having to learn to dogfight with a joystick. It's so hard to learn on your own, especially.

Wildstar might be an original IP, but it's not an original game. That's the problem. I don't mind them reusing old IPs especially in new applications. Nobody said Dr. Mario was just some retread of the old Mario series because it was a completely different application of their IP. They're just slapping glossy paint jobs on old products. Dark and Demon Souls seem very original as games, but you hear a lot about how retro they are. In reality, they are retro; they're a giant step backwards from where we went to a more pure gaming concept. In fact, most indie developers aren't being original, they're using concepts for gaming that have gone wildly out of style. Very few people have developed concepts that are, literally, the first of their kind. The reason they seem so original is because so many people didn't grow up on NES and never went to a real quarter arcade. RTS games that stretch your brain and planning seem like brand new concepts if you weren't around to remember the Blizzard v Westwood games. Case in point, we don't have any MMORPGs like Crimson Skies. It might not be an original IP, but we don't have a Crimson Skies MMORPG or anything really like it. At this point, Wildstar is the closest thing we have to a Jak and Daxter IP. But those games might be wildly divergent from what we're used to in an MMORPG. It wouldn't make sense to say, "Oh, Capcom's just making another Mega Man game" when it's been over a decade since we got a Mega Man Legends game, almost a decade since we got a Battle Network game, and the rest are all old-school 2d scrolling shooters. To make that IP into an MMO wouldn't just be completely different than the other MMORPGs, it would be completely different from what the IP is used to. I mean, we take it for granted now, but WoW isn't like the rest of the Warcraft franchise unless you count their book RPG. Now that it's the biggest MMORPG on the planet, we kind of forget how weird that was at the time. I remember wondering WTF they were doing converting a realtime strategy game into EverQuest and how that was even going to work. It was less of a jump when Square developed FFXI, at least that was originally an RPG. I guarantee that if From Software used one of their existing IPs to make an MMORPG, it would be a lot less derivative than what your average indie kickstarter developer could do with an original IP. Indie developers just don't have the juice to pull off what they promise. It's one of the saddest things about Star Citizen. It sounded like it was going to be an original-style of MMORPG. It's been depressing to watch them backtracking from all of their ideas and ending up with a slurry of Wing Commander crossed with EVE Online. They were supposed to make space interesting to explore and to give us a challenge. They can't offer us anything. I would say our best bet for something that actually plays as an original RPG is going to come from one of the larger studios that's still in the business of innovating. Hell, if From Software made a Tenchu MMORPG, it might be from an original IP, but it would be very different from anything we have on the market. Hell, for all we know, Titan is going to be a very different kind of game from what we have, since Blizzard has a tendency to develop very well despite their size. I think, in the end, the games industry has suffered ever since we started viewing it as a visual and narrative, rather than spacial, medium. We're trying to model games on films and books, two forms of art that severely restrict and limit the growth of the industry. People just forget that video games aren't a series of related vignettes and stories, they're inhabited spaces. That mindset has hit MMORPGs, the most spatial of genres in games, the hardest. There isn't a story in video games that I haven't seen before done better somewhere else. The point is that you are supposed to be "in" these worlds; they are inhabited rather than observed. Even indie developers don't really get what that means, so they keep gutting the same settings and refinishing them for new tenants over and over. It looks brand new, but it's the same game with new paint and new shrubs.

Yeah, I guess it would be different if Mega Man was like a modern game and we were continuing a story, like if Blizzard made another WoW. Then again, Mega Man's always been a little light on story. Either it was a one-off story with no continuity, like Legends or the Battle Network games, or it was... well... look old Nintendo games had a "plot", but you could write it on a post-it note. I definitely know where you're coming from if, say, they made a Diablo MMORPG. While it might be good, even great, it might also definitely feel derivative. Jak and Daxter would be great, though, or even something Jak and Daxter-ish. I really loved the sort of tinkering you did in those games, and it might be a lot more fun to, instead of upgrading the same sword over and over again, to make crafting a lot more prominent as a method of attaining gear and/or skills. That way, you don't need to gather 100 Seals of Everythingness to get a mount, though you might need to travel around the world gathering bits to make a dune buggy. I think games sort of inch in that direction, but it would be great to have a game that made your "profession" into your character class. Imagine if everyone got to custom make and tune their own weapons, armor, and items instead of having an auction house for those weapons, armor, and items. Just ingredients.

Well, a few things we'd have to consider. First being setting, that the universe that the Mega Man games takes place in is not only in the less-heavily used sci-fi genre for MMORPGs, but isn't really in the morally ambiguous setting that all sci-fi games are set in. There are definitely evil scientists, people living peaceful and joyous lives in the future, and decent individuals trying to help them out. That doesn't exist that I've seen in any current MMORPGs, so it would be nice to have at least one game that doesn't think the future is going to be a sloppy grey mess. It's like people tripped over Neuromancer and never got up again. Second, as opposed to pretty much every other game I've ever played, Mega Man's growth is almost entirely lateral. In the RPG, you actually get little bits that change the way your buster operates, but most often you're fine tuning the beam into something that feels comfortable, as opposed to always upgrading it. Even in the original games, the entire nature of progression is that you can go through the levels in any order and none of the weapons are "keys" to unlock progression. I remember that being weird as a kid, since you get so used to doing levels in order. If you've ever played the series, it features all kinds of things you'd probably never see in a game meant for our aging male demographic and the sorts of things more "mature" studio games turn their noses up at. Things like dogs turning into springboards, futuristic cities that aren't vile corporate cesspits, and Gemini Man (seriously, Gemini man!) The games industry simply doesn't have anything like this now. Hell, Capcom can't even seem to get it's feet out from behind its ears to make use of their IPs. My brother in law has a theory that Capcom execs hate Mega Man because it's too far out of line with their Street Fighter, Resident Evil, and Monster Hunter series. I kind of disagreed, but after seeing what they did to the Mega Man Legends franchise lately, it doesn't seem that far out of the ballpark. I mean, you can say it's unoriginal, but it's radically different than any MMORPGs we have out there (I'd say the closest thing to it would be Sega's Phantasy Star series, if you'd call any of those MMORPGs). That's why I picked everything on the list that I picked; they're existing IPs that don't have a direct corollary. What do we have that's really original in games design? They may not have to use the same tropes, but they do. Every fantasy MMORPG seems to have a fetish for Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings (if there's one genre that is stuck in a rut more than anything, it's probably the fantasy genre's inability to think outside Tolkein's box) and if I see one more castle siege CGI trailer again I feel like I'm going to put my head through a wall. It's almost mind-numbing. One of the reasons I felt bored with ESO was it seemed to drain all the fun out of the fantasy genre and one of my major complaints about EVE is that it spends so much time mired in moral ambiguity that I absolutely lose all drive to complete anything. So why not suggest IPs that exist but that we don't have. If someone can make a game like Mega Man into an MMORPG and make it completely original, then fine, I'd be happy to see it. But considering you'd be playing a robot you design yourself and the game isn't already set in a very dedicated universe where you'll see a lot of recurring characters, I wouldn't see why the original IP wouldn't be fresh here. It isn't like we've had a Mega Man RPG in over a decade, so it isn't like we're being swamped with Mega Man games and all its hundreds of clones.

Final Fantasy XIV: Tokyo Godfathers

Considering all the original IP MMORPGs have been pretty derivative, I would hazard to say that the limit to game potential isn't based on the use of existing IPs, but more on developers' inability to produce original gameplay. Hence the question. What IP do people think would make a good MMORPG that we haven't been discussing? The fact is that there's a lot of intellectual property out there that would make an incredibly original MMORPG, especially considering the market. Would it be more original for someone to make another sword-and-sorcery fantasy MMORPG with an original title or for Capcom to make a Mega Man MMORPG? I know which one of those we've seen a lot more of and which would be more exciting.

Hey! I've got an idea! Let's list some existing IPs that would make good MMORPGs that might seem a little surprising, some of the reasons why, along with some of the detriments to them. I'll kickoff. Armored Core (From Software) Armored Core was a game about mecha that was, essentially, the best sci-fi RPG I ever played. I brought this up yesterday with some friends, and instead of people coming after me because they thought it wasn't the best, it seemed like most people didn't think it's an RPG. Really, though, it is. Armored Core revolved around tough decisions to obscure stats that could make or break your rig WAY before it was a thing when EVE did it (which is probably why I don't get why people think gearing in EVE is such a hassle). So much variation and lateral movement. The biggest issue I see with it? MMORPGs operate best on an individual level, Armored Core puts you into a gigantic suit of armor. That will either definitively separate "town" from "game world" because one will be interacted with in-person and the other would be interacted with in the suit. It might also limit setting, because the suits will be huge. There's no "explore the cave" thing when you're in a massive machine. Still, I can see it being done well, especially if the setting becomes much more vast. Mega Man Legends (Capcom) Also had a discussion about this recently. A long discussion. As in a discussion triple-damning Capcom's soulless and idiotic business management team for killing their new Mega Man Legends game because people don't want to pay 40 dollars for a demo. Regardless, in case nobody knows, Capcom made an amazingly good RPG series using their Mega Man IP. Which, I know, sounds ridiculous. Hear me out, though. Mega Man was a crazy sci-fi setting you can barely make anymore, in that it could be somewhat dark but wasn't dripping with head-slapping moral ambiguity. Best of all, it was a REALLY good game, especially mechanically. The greatest strength of the IP is in the name itself. They could throw goofy swords, trains, and what have you in there, but I guarantee you that EVERYONE that grew up with that game came up with a few insert-cool-name-here-man ideas. Imagine being able to gear up your own sentient robot with lightning weapons, dust weapons, and the like, and to power your own buster or sword. I mean, the detriment is that it might be hard to pull off correctly. It's not going to target the most nasty demographic, and that seems to be what the MMORPG market aims at, but I really think Capcom's developers could pull that off and make it memorable. They won't because their business branch sucks, but I swear it could work. Crimson Skies (Microsoft Game Studios as far as I know) Crimson Skies, for those who don't know, is a game set in an alternate dieselpunk reality of the 1930s where old-fashioned planes and zeppelins became a sort of recreation of the golden age of piracy. Obviously, the major drawbacks might be the same as the Armored Core game, that you'd need to get out of the plane to have a "city" and in this case most of the scenery would be passing by beneath and around you most of the time instead of being directly experienced. However, I can see this working. Considering the scenery is just that... scenery, you could REALLY get away with making the overworld huge. It would also mean you might be able to really do land development like you can't do in other games, because you'd need so much blank land to make the game work, you could probably drop private bases all over the place and put hidden airstrips everywhere. It'd be difficult to design, but I think the pros might outweight the cons there. On a related note... Descent (Interplay Studios) Descent was a bit like Doom back in the day it was released... only that you flew around in a small spaceship. The one game where you had to deal with complete freedom of motion, I loved the sense of vertigo you'd get floating around. It's the one flying game that might give you the option of both dogfighting at high speed and entering a dungeon setting. I know Interplay re-registered the trademark. Problems are similar to Armored Core and Crimson Skies above, that you might not be able to have a "town" per se unless you disembarked, but that's not as distinct of a problem here. Descent was always more maneuverable and personable than those other games. It might work out. Starcraft (Blizzard) This might not seem like such an oversight. Blizzard owns the MMORPG that still reigns above them all as their crowning achievement years after the game had become graphically and conceptually archaic. They are working on a new project even now that had to be developed to such exacting standards that they essentially erased all they had at one point in disgust. And yet, I recall being disappointed when the only hard information we had on their Titan project was that it wasn't essentially going to be World of Starcraft. Disappointed, because I once had a long, drawn out conversation with my brother wherein I essentially out-did WoW with Starcraft's potential. Seriously, your three factions would essentially have three different ways of leveling (Terrans using gear and skills, Zerg using character models and evolution, Protoss using techniques and crazy-squid-space-magic), almost unlimited settings as you can always add more planets to any system, and an atmosphere that can literally go from wild-west drama to Starship Trooper-style action to darkened horror within minutes. It's a game where you can essentially add huge amounts of lateral growth for all the races, have a metric ton of enemies to fight (it's space, after all), and balance the game in faction-specific performance rather than having to give everyone access to the same stuff. The problems? They're a little harder to come up with... sometimes I think Blizz is creating a new sci-fi IP for Titan simply because a Starcraft MMORPG was almost too obvious of a good idea. I do see that there might be issues with it, though. As an IP, it's known, but it doesn't have the breadth that Azeroth's game universe had. Three-way faction balance on factions that operate in completely different ways might be exceptionally difficult (or not, depending). It might also simply be that Starcraft is only really going through it's second phase of serial development and maybe they wouldn't have wanted to really work on that idea until it was done. I'm not sure, but it mostly seems like Blizz looked at it and said, "You know what? It's too easy..."

There's worse than that. I used to work at a company that had a contract with Starbucks. I designed them for overseas, specifically Europe, the Middle East, and Asia (seriously, there's a four story nightclub of a Starbucks in Abdul Amman in Jordan I worked on, coffee is srs bsns out there). Our branch wasn't run by principle architects, though, they were run by a set of MBAs in the back. They tried to "streamline" us in two ways. First, they opened an office in Mumbai to try and handle some of the Revit grunt work on the cheap. Second, they stripped the team down to one actual architect, the rest were all designers in certification and interior designers. Third, they started taking on an enormous amount of projects, figuring these things would increase our capacity. What happened was that the Mumbai office never got anything done. They couldn't retain staff, what staff they retained was ineffectual. So they always had half the staff we expected. So we had to handle everything, and there was only one architect to handle ALL of the official stamping and oversight (we were pushing out five projects PER PERSON one week). Which meant our huge volume overwhelmed the stripped-down staff. They immediately put us into mandatory 48 hour a week shifts (which didn't matter, I was doing 60 hours a week just to meet the deadlines I had, and there were people staying longer). A month or so of that, of missing deadlines because of the Mumbai office and having construction admin issues because of checkset oversights, Starbucks decided to drastically scale back our work. Dried up overnight. They decided to start laying off staff. I was caught up in the second round of that. In the end, almost the entire team quit and left the firm hanging because they were sick of how it was being run. Knowing business doesn't mean you should run a business. Sort of the reason otherwise shockingly good developers like Capcom are in trouble right now. MBAs that don't know games are running the show.

This is in no way a common thing across MMOs and has more to do with FFXIV's male models not all being steroid beefcakes - the same reason a lot of women play male high elves or male castanics in TERA. Oh don't get me wrong, I totally agree with you. I was pointing out that most female characters are played by guys, and the counter point to that was how there were so many more female players than I was giving credit to, so I countered that with the fact that many female players also play male characters (for much the same reason most guys play girls). More often than not it has nothing to do with gender identity (not to say that this isn't the case some of the time) but more to do with liking the way dem pixels come together. Most female characters aren't played by male characters though. As 'allgivenover' mentioned, this is all anecdotal. But recent research has shown the idea that there are 'no girls on the internet' is a very outdated belief. In your experience, most female avatars are played by men. Your experiences differ from others' experiences as well as the various censi lying around. That does not mean your experiences actually pull weight in a discussion. Additionally, it is rather foolish for businesses to ignore minority demographics. The differenceis that there is a vicious cycle in society that places white straight men as default human beings. This means that not only can straight whit men relate to their own demographics but minorities can too. Businesses do regard minorities and are foolish should they choose not to. They just don't put as much effort into targeting minorities because it is presumed that while minorities can relate to straight white men, straight white men can't relate or respect minorities...according to marketers. Woah woah woah now, let's not pull the race card so quickly here. I never said that the targeted demographic had to be a hetero white male, I just stated that companies determine a demographic early on and focus their design decisions based around that demographic. If the targeted demographic were burly homosexual steel mill workers, then you can bet your ass that the game would be heavily focused on burly homosexual men (or women, I'm not here to judge) who were probably blacksmiths or something. Or, to put it another way, just because you don't like it as a principle doesn't mean that companies don't inherently judge us that way. And I'm hard pressed to say they're always wrong. When games are "localized" for us from foreign companies, they take the same demographic information they get from our companies. Which are horribly out of date and not inclusive (I'm assuming the same thing happens in those countries). And, according to the games industry, young men play more video games than women and older men. Our games industry and localization for us are both geared heavily towards that demographic. In the end, they may be right, in a way. As Nintendo proved with their Wii, though, and subsequent phone games, the market is bigger than that. However, the mega-blockbuster video game (and MMORPGs are generally included in that) bank on the 18-34 year old player demographic. That's not so say that's a good idea, considering the average age of a modern player is 30, but it's as much of a reality as targeting cleaning products towards married stay-at-home moms. It seems demeaning that every vacuum seems to be cleaning up after kids midday by some well-made-up married woman in advertisements, especially considering we all own a vacuum, it's just where their advertising bucks can get the most bang. In video games, it's targeted towards a demographic that hasn't been clinically true for at least a decade or two, but who knows? They may think that if they target young men, they'll get the most bang for their buck as older men and women will still play, but losing the target demographic would be suicide. I'm not sure; I'm not a marketing exec. I have a soul.

While fantasia potions are a safe bet at this point dedicated RP servers are never going to happen. This style of role-play that we enjoy is an entirely western cultural meme - one that's very niche in the west even and always has been - that is virtually absent in east asian cultures. It ain't happening. Fortunately after having spent so much time in Japanese and Korean MMOs I long ago figured out that the lack of dedicated RP servers doesn't inhibit role-play in any noticeable way beyond causing tiresome arguments around launch time regarding which server to mark as the unofficial RP server. It very much inhibits it. On Moon Guard on WoW, especially back in its heyday, I could literally do a bar crawl around the bars in the major Alliance towns to see what was going down. Everyone was RPing because we all knew where to start our characters and what forums to go to. We could also report people for griefing us (and yes, I have actually gotten tells from people whose friends I got banned for dancing naked on tables, so Blizzard really does do something about griefers sometimes) and I knew that, even if people on those servers weren't RPers, they were on our territory, not on theirs. That's probably a major reason why I'm still RPing in WoW, still going to play it when the new expack comes out, and don't know that I'm really that impressed by RP options elsewhere. In WoW, we have a place to go that I know, for sure, will be inundated with potential random RP, especially when people have addons like MRP advertising them as roleplayers. You can't make that assumption about everyone on Balmung or Gilgamesh. It's almost Yahoo IM Forum-like.

Let's remember that we also have a tendency to skew our own perspective. I just dropped in to check the official Wildstar forums. There is a post on character body types and one on their glamour system, but there seems to be a lot more discussion going on about mounts right now. Roleplayers might care about very finite details in character creation, but for the most part, we're just not that big of a demographic. In WoW, I used to wonder why they didn't have more customization options for characters, why we couldn't have more characters per server, why they never seemed to give roleplayers anything we could use. Turns out that things like the transmog and barber systems were just fine for most players' purposes, and I wasn't aware of just how babied we were as roleplayers. I haven't seen any other game give us dedicated RP servers except Age of Conan, and their RP server was FFA PVP. It was only when I looked at the realm list that I realized how few of those servers they actually need to house us roleplayers and those people who play with roleplayers. I mean, FFXIV doesn't even have dedicated servers for RPers. Maybe that's the sort of thing I would think should be added later if it can't be added now (as well as a fantasia-potion sort of thing). That might be a major development, but it might be more understandable. I guess, stepping back from my narrow RP window view, I could understand a developer wanting to spend their limited time resources elsewhere for launch; obviously they need to make a good video game first because we roleplayers can barely keep a decent book series afloat with sales by ourselves. There's probably less excuse for games like WoW to not have better customization except that they'll probably try to replace the entire game in a few years. But given how fast they have to get these games out, get them hyped, and get them recognized before they get the big FAILURE stamp, I can easily see why variable shoulder breadth isn't the highest on their list of priorities. Outside of this forum, I've never heard of a game succeeding or failing due solely to character customization. And like I said, as a roleplayer, it's not even top of my list of priorities. I'd much rather have WoW's limited character generator and an RP server than having all these customization options but not having a place to go where I know I'll find RP. If I was going to pick my battle, I'd say dedicated RP servers are the ground I'd like to win and hold.

While we might like more character customization, we roleplayers who care a lot about such things are a very, very small minority in games. Essentially, we're worth some tokens every now and then, but the stuff we want, like interactive hangout spots, character customization, emotes, and empty buildings, are the first things to go in game design if there's a time crunch. I guess maybe I'm more forgiving since I learned to RP on forums and in book games. I barely look at my actual character models because no customizer on Earth is ever going to come close to creating what I actually describe and, really, it isn't necessary for me. So I'll see how Wildstar comes along. If it's gameplay and atmosphere is more fun than XIV, then I might switch. I can't see paying a sub for it and XIV at the same time. Character customization is nice, but if I wanted it at the top of my list, I'd be RPing in forums and books, not in a video game where everything is limited. As it stands, I'm RPing as a sideline to fun games, so having a boob slider is WAY down my list of priorities, far below mechanical competence, combat systems, and whether the actual game is at all entertaining. After all that is settled, I'll probably worry more about my character's face, which, of course, I never see when I'm staring at his back while running.

There's a reason there's no architect class. You'd have skills like: Call Contractor: 35 CP Call a contractor. Learn that they missed an element in the CAD and you will have to redesign your egress path to meet Eorzean fire code and assign room volume to new dead end corridors. This ability takes 24 hours to take effect.

Y'know, I never thought I'd be the one saying this, because I was the person who railed against the old human and aurin boobs back in the day (even gave Carbine explicit feedback on an e-mail survey at the end of one of the closed beta sessions stating that it was keeping me from wanting to play the game), but... That's the style. The females are varying shapes of hourglass (unless they're a funky side-character), while the males tend to be varying shapes of inverted triangle (again, unless you're a funky side character). Now, I'll give you the boobies. I'd love it if they had a chest slider at the very least and let us pick what breast size we wanted with our various body types. But I think your complaint is with the art style as a whole, not with Carbine's treatment of character models. Honestly, a lot is going to depend on the game itself. If it functions on a higher level than other games mechanically, it'll have traded a long-winded character generator for something useful. However, if they're making a game that lives on art style alone and is otherwise vapid, it will have just been laziness. If it's a middle-of-the-road game, I'll still be pleased with the art style. I remember the cartoons I watched as a kid often having this look, and the game seems to not be taking itself too seriously. Luckily, I have made sure I am never excited anymore for anything. The only games I have been excited for since WoW have been Diablo 3, Final Fantasy XIV (original release), and Age of Conan. So I'm one for three in having my expectations met. I'm not going to hold my breath for anything. At least then I'll be pleasantly surprised when four months after launch some game is actually good.