New D&D video game in the works. Its a MMO
- Thread starter Derren
- Start date
Asmor
First Post
Did you do that to yourself, or was it a mod?
He did it himself. If it were a mod, it would say it had been edited, and also the mod would have said something too.
I think for a MMO to attract me it would have to have either permanent death, or at least very serious penalties for death, and preferably a much shallower power curve than I've seen in any MMOs I've tried, so that level is not everything and a wide range of characters could adventure together. More promotion of roleplaying would be nice too, the only time I've seen much spontaneous RP was playing multiplayer Neverwinter Nights (the 3e version).
I suppose these can't be very popular desires, or someone would have done it already, *sigh*.
I dunno, would it kill them to have say a 'permanent death' server running alongside the usual 'free respawn' servers? I think it would create a different and much more interesting game experience.
I suppose these can't be very popular desires, or someone would have done it already, *sigh*.
I dunno, would it kill them to have say a 'permanent death' server running alongside the usual 'free respawn' servers? I think it would create a different and much more interesting game experience.
Majoru Oakheart
Adventurer
I've said this in a previous thread, but I don't understand why people have such a big problem with DDO. It's a fun game for what it is. You get together with a bunch of friends, form a group, go into a dungeon and kill some monsters and take their stuff. They managed to get the essence of D&D.
A lot of people give it a hard time for not having an open world, not having enough interaction with other players, and so on. I know, I don't really WANT those things. To me a good game should be about a small group of people going on a quest.
I stopped playing DDO because it does have its bad points. The problem is that everyone playing the game has memorized all the quests so it is no fun to play any of them. Plus, people play quests now just to find a treasure chest and purposefully fail out of the mission. Those 2 things alone are enough to get me to stop playing. The game needed about 10 times as many quests in order to avoid that. But, given the impossibility of creating that many quests, they should have just put more randomness into the quests. The problem is, the lead designer was quoted as saying in an interview that he hated randomness so much that there would never be any in DDO. That missions needed to be carefully planned and traps and monsters carefully placed or they were no fun.
The other bad thing was how they decided to handle iterative attacks. For those who don't know, they ran into a problem during beta where people would attack once, move an inch then attack again so they never had to use their second or third iterative attacks, since they always missed. So, in order to fix this, they changed the formula. So now, when you have iterative attacks, your later attacks all get +5 to hit. So, a 16th level figher has +16/+21/+26/+31 to hit. This worked in their goal of encouraging people to stand still and use their iterative attacks. Unfortunately, this caused people's attack bonuses to be SO high that they could hit with all 4 of their attacks no problem. So, instead of fixing that issue, they increased the AC of every monster in the game. Now you can't hit with your primary or secondary attacks at all, making them wasted.
I think with a large influx of new players when it switches to free play, it will be fun to play again for a while as no one will know any of the missions, so they'll all group again. But it'll go back to being kind of annoying shortly after.
Majoru Oakheart
Adventurer
It's been discussed on message boards for various MMOs, both the ones that currently exist and a couple that were in development and failed.
Permanent death just doesn't work in an MMO for various reasons. Mainly, they contradict most of the OTHER goals of MMOs.
No matter how you do the levelling system, it will take some time to gain levels(or skills, or powers, or whatever you gain). It can't take too little time to get to "max level" or people get bored with your game, saying it's too easy to reach the end. And given the real time nature of an MMO, it has to take a good couple of days or weeks at LEAST before you can get from bottom level to highest level.
Given the time commitment involved, nobody wants their character to die and have to do all that work over again. Especially not with internet lag, sudden disconnection, and gross incompetence of strangers on the internet all being factors on whether you live or die.
Roleplaying is another one of those things that people SAY they want but don't really. Given a choice between sitting around roleplaying and getting cool new powers and abilities quicker, 95% of all people pick the latter. There certainly might be a small number of people who want all roleplaying all the time. But they are far and few between. Most people are a mix of level motivated and role playing oriented. And given the choice of avoiding all areas with Orcs in them in the game because your character is friends with the Orcs and being able to find a group and get xp....most people choose the group and the XP. I know I did when I vowed that I was going to roleplay my character no matter what. And, as far as I know, no one has come up with a way to either enforce or reward roleplaying in an MMO.
As for running a permanent death server along side a normal server...it just isn't worth it for companies. There would be so few people on the server that it wouldn't be worth the money to keep it running. Add to that the headache they'd have to deal with as the players on that server would be calling customer service all the time to complain that some player killed them in PvP or that lag killed off their 80th level character with the best gear in the game and they want him brought back to life because it wasn't a legitimate death.
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
So, wait, distilling the actual information here, all this reveals is that there were probably some ruminations somewhere of a NWN MMO, that has almost nothing to do with the lawsuit aside from maybe being off-handedly mentioned in it?
Okay. Working on this from a "potentially something there" angle.
It doesn't matter if it's an MMO. MMO's are giving CEO's a billion boners right now because of subscription-based steady income streams and possible additional content. WoW is huge. There's a lot of suits who would axe their own auntie just to get a fraction of that pie. The MMO formula is seen as the way to do it.
The MMO formula has also so far been unable to really support more than one big MMO at a time, so you either have to be that game, or suffer from vast wastelands of silent servers where a few truefans and luddites stay around after the first month. I'm playing some FFXI (because I am nothing if not slightly obsessive.
), and I'm awed that there are 10 other people in the game region I'm in! Sometimes, at once!
So if the next big D&D game is an MMO, it has a potential to be that game. But it's an unsteady time to be an MMO. We're in the "react to WoW" phase, where people are taking the things that the public might not like about the game genre (such as the grind, the forced partying, the level climb, the "kill a rabbit, now kill a dire rabbit, now kill a super dire rabbit" redundancy of the quests, etc.) and toying with how to do it in a new way. You can't just follow WoW's model this time out. It's hard to do the same thing.
It's going to be a bit about the brand, but it is also going to be about more than just the brand. The brand will sell you $20 start up discs and get people on for that first free month, and might keep a few truefans on. Beyond the brand (and Neverwinter Nights should be a pretty strong brand!), you need the best MMO out there. The one that will convince people that they don't need WoW anymore.
'cuz the fraction of the market that pays for two monthly MMO subscriptions at a time is itty bitty.
D&D has some unique potential to be a really good MMO, though. Stormreach didn't exactly cut it because it was crazy limited. Ideas include customization (let "DMs" design new adventures! Make a toolkit where people can add on their own content!), flexibility (make a character of any level you want, and jump in! No grind!), and quirky rules adherence (a grid-based, turn-based MMO? That's intersting and different!). You can't just clone WoW and get something good at this point in the market.
Unfortunately, AFAIK, Atari still has the power to do as they wish with the D&D name in videogames, and they have a history of doing pretty silly things, muddy and buggy and full of half-insane design choices. It does not inspire confidence in me.
And out of left field: Honestly, I would adore a Planescape MMO. It would work major-excellently. A big hub (Sigil) with a lot of diverse lands (the...er...entire multiverse). PC-joinable organizations with a (mostly) nonviolent competition (Factions). Endless possibilities for expansion sets (there's nothing you can't add out of extreme left field).
I wouldn't expect it, and I'm a big biased PS dork, but every time I play an MMO, I just think, "This would be so much better if I was a modron sensate on my way to Pandaemonium instead of some elf in a desert beating up dire bunnies."
Okay. Working on this from a "potentially something there" angle.
It doesn't matter if it's an MMO. MMO's are giving CEO's a billion boners right now because of subscription-based steady income streams and possible additional content. WoW is huge. There's a lot of suits who would axe their own auntie just to get a fraction of that pie. The MMO formula is seen as the way to do it.
The MMO formula has also so far been unable to really support more than one big MMO at a time, so you either have to be that game, or suffer from vast wastelands of silent servers where a few truefans and luddites stay around after the first month. I'm playing some FFXI (because I am nothing if not slightly obsessive.
), and I'm awed that there are 10 other people in the game region I'm in! Sometimes, at once! So if the next big D&D game is an MMO, it has a potential to be that game. But it's an unsteady time to be an MMO. We're in the "react to WoW" phase, where people are taking the things that the public might not like about the game genre (such as the grind, the forced partying, the level climb, the "kill a rabbit, now kill a dire rabbit, now kill a super dire rabbit" redundancy of the quests, etc.) and toying with how to do it in a new way. You can't just follow WoW's model this time out. It's hard to do the same thing.
It's going to be a bit about the brand, but it is also going to be about more than just the brand. The brand will sell you $20 start up discs and get people on for that first free month, and might keep a few truefans on. Beyond the brand (and Neverwinter Nights should be a pretty strong brand!), you need the best MMO out there. The one that will convince people that they don't need WoW anymore.
'cuz the fraction of the market that pays for two monthly MMO subscriptions at a time is itty bitty.
D&D has some unique potential to be a really good MMO, though. Stormreach didn't exactly cut it because it was crazy limited. Ideas include customization (let "DMs" design new adventures! Make a toolkit where people can add on their own content!), flexibility (make a character of any level you want, and jump in! No grind!), and quirky rules adherence (a grid-based, turn-based MMO? That's intersting and different!). You can't just clone WoW and get something good at this point in the market.
Unfortunately, AFAIK, Atari still has the power to do as they wish with the D&D name in videogames, and they have a history of doing pretty silly things, muddy and buggy and full of half-insane design choices. It does not inspire confidence in me.
And out of left field: Honestly, I would adore a Planescape MMO. It would work major-excellently. A big hub (Sigil) with a lot of diverse lands (the...er...entire multiverse). PC-joinable organizations with a (mostly) nonviolent competition (Factions). Endless possibilities for expansion sets (there's nothing you can't add out of extreme left field).
I wouldn't expect it, and I'm a big biased PS dork, but every time I play an MMO, I just think, "This would be so much better if I was a modron sensate on my way to Pandaemonium instead of some elf in a desert beating up dire bunnies."
Silverblade The Ench
First Post
I don't want an MMO, I want a single player, turn based game.
MMOs suck. DDO was by far the best MMO (not just 'cause it was D&D), only one with decent gameplay but had far too little content.
MMOs suck. DDO was by far the best MMO (not just 'cause it was D&D), only one with decent gameplay but had far too little content.
Shemeska
Adventurer
Becoming addicted to crystal meth would probably be better for my life, because my productivity would -die- if they released that. I'd be running around as a tiefling xaositect for far too many hours a day.
chitzk0i
Explorer
Did anybody link the news article on the main page that actually includes a quotation from court papers mentioning the rumored game? It seems like if the rumor is solid enough to base a lawsuit on, there'd be some kind of evidence, but go figure.
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