Give Me Pay-to-Play Anyday
Derek Hidey
Issue date: 10/4/06 Section: The AT Wire
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This brings me to my next problem: The Free-to-Play MMO. What could possibly be wrong with a free game you ask? How could I say I dislike MMOs because they require monthly fees and then turn around and hate them for being free? Well, it is a matter of quality that brings me to my decision. Almost all free-to-play MMOs are terrible. There are, however, a few exceptions worth mentioning such as Guild Wars and… well that's it. These free MMOs tend to be released before they are finished and properly tested.
Korean game developers are the biggest culprits of producing the free-to-play MMO. Some examples include: Priston Tale, an MMO released a while back that featured cartoon-like graphics on a three-dimensional engine; Rose Online, an MMO very similar to Priston Tale; Fly for Fun, an MMO identical to Rose Online except that characters can fly; Trickster Online, a two-dimensional MMO featuring characters that have animal-like characteristics. All of these examples have more aspects that make them similar than they do that make them different.
One of the biggest clues to whether a free-to-play MMO is worth playing can be seen in their website. If you were to visit each of the example's websites you would undoubtedly believe they were all made by the same parent company. They each have nearly identical layouts and message boards, etc. But we shouldn't judge an MMO by its website, right? Wrong. These Korean MMOs are deceiving because they make you believe you are getting something for free that would normally cost money. In reality, in order to get access the full features of these games, you have to pay a "small" fee. Instead of it being a monthly thing, it is considered optional. The problem is that when a player who doesn't pay for the extra content goes up against the one who does, guess who has the advantage? This makes gameplay unbalanced and unfair for a majority of the players. Making these games is as easy as chopping at cookie dough with a cookie cutter. They simply have to make the game look different and change the gameplay ever so slightly before repacking it and putting it out there for people to play.
MMOs have the potential to become much more than the cookie-cutter, revenue generating games they are today. Unfortunately, until software developers are forced to rethink how they make their games, we are more likely to see Mike Weaver actually interview God, and that, as spoken by Malcolm Reynolds, is "a long wait for a train that don't come."
Korean game developers are the biggest culprits of producing the free-to-play MMO. Some examples include: Priston Tale, an MMO released a while back that featured cartoon-like graphics on a three-dimensional engine; Rose Online, an MMO very similar to Priston Tale; Fly for Fun, an MMO identical to Rose Online except that characters can fly; Trickster Online, a two-dimensional MMO featuring characters that have animal-like characteristics. All of these examples have more aspects that make them similar than they do that make them different.
One of the biggest clues to whether a free-to-play MMO is worth playing can be seen in their website. If you were to visit each of the example's websites you would undoubtedly believe they were all made by the same parent company. They each have nearly identical layouts and message boards, etc. But we shouldn't judge an MMO by its website, right? Wrong. These Korean MMOs are deceiving because they make you believe you are getting something for free that would normally cost money. In reality, in order to get access the full features of these games, you have to pay a "small" fee. Instead of it being a monthly thing, it is considered optional. The problem is that when a player who doesn't pay for the extra content goes up against the one who does, guess who has the advantage? This makes gameplay unbalanced and unfair for a majority of the players. Making these games is as easy as chopping at cookie dough with a cookie cutter. They simply have to make the game look different and change the gameplay ever so slightly before repacking it and putting it out there for people to play.
MMOs have the potential to become much more than the cookie-cutter, revenue generating games they are today. Unfortunately, until software developers are forced to rethink how they make their games, we are more likely to see Mike Weaver actually interview God, and that, as spoken by Malcolm Reynolds, is "a long wait for a train that don't come."
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Magnificent Epiphany
Malshew
posted 10/05/06 @ 8:04 PM EST
The problem with free-to-play (F2P) games is that MMO's are expensive to run. You need customer support, money for servers, money for bandwidth, time to fix bugs, time to add content, etc. (Continued…)
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