12/30/2023 0 Comments Dwarf fortress ascii face beardAnd I realize my neckbeard is showing here but Dwarf Fortress does some amazing things with ascii. Perhaps Turbine could be bs'ed into a MMORPG "hosting" service as a secendary revenue source? "Dudes, your already running how many games? We'll buy the servers and pay you to run them as long as we're ending up cutting overall costs by not having to maintain our own staff." That or a solution with similar results would leave the indies with the tasks of content and moderation to focus on without the silly assumption that they must take on the burden of servers because there's no other way. compaired to the scenario assumed by Tan in his comments on "manpower" with the indies staffing their own servers with their own people. Could this, maybe coupled with a vanity/boost store, t-shirts, coffee mugs, and yada meet the bills instead of the current model? Is there any way for the indies to sluff off "departments" here? With servers and their minion opperators being the obvious gorilla in the expense room would it be possible to farm out the server side? It would be my pulled from my neather regions guess that Turbine might get some savings by having techies maintain servers for LotRO, D&D, etc. The question here is how were the prices set in the first place? Are the fees an honest assessment of the costs necessary to pay for and opperate the servers, moderate the gameworld, and develop and maintain content as distrubuted among the expected player-base or is it more like 'WoW charges x so we can too" pricing? Assuming the former are there other ways for an "indie" team to realize the funds necessary to run the thing? I was never a fan of the pay for the software so you can pay a monthly sub thing but I'd more readily consider paying a premium price for the software if not charged a monthly subscription fee. The Silver comment about "more and more" failed MMORPG's is interesting in its obvious failure to note that the only genera of game that can bankrupt a developer overnight, according to Silver, is also the only genera with the subscription business model that can be strongly affected by a poor economy which is how a developer can shut down after "mere months online, even with millions of dollars backing the projects." No subscriptions. So the assumption here seems to be that there is some level of undefined "quality" below which a MMORPG can not have any success. I just haven't seen anything that would lead me to believe that the Indie 'space' is the place for them to be developed. I think it would be easier to sell a game as something other than an MMORPG both to the public and to investors.ĭon't get me wrong, I like MMORPG. In a lot of ways, I think that experience is better, especially if the server admins can customize the experience of their server. The experience is different for players running private servers and for the players who play on those servers. The same cannot be said for MMORPG servers. There are even small scale examples of private servers on the internet. The tools available for producing a game that runs on private servers are more readily available. Add "MMO" to whatever you're developing and the cost escalates rapidly. The cost of making an MMORPG is prohibitive to get a quality product. I have several reasons for thinking this is a better way to go for Indie developers and even for the AAA crowd. I'd go for a persistent, multiplayer experience, where players run their own private servers. I think you could get a better product by not doing an MMORPG. It just costs too much to get something acceptable. If I were a developer I don't think I'd go for an MMORPG. No, you won't drag in 2M subscribers, but it will get you started and make a name for yourself, perhaps so that your next title becomes the next big thing. I think there's still some underserved niches too, (like say, good PVE sandboxes without FFA, full loot PVP) and plenty of room for someone to give them that sort of game. Take EVE for example, their subscribers stick with it, sometimes for many, many years because there literally is no where else for them to go, there is nothing out on the marketplace (besides Perpetuum) so they've carved out a great niche. It seems to me the best way for an Indie MMO to succeed is to identify and try to serve a very specific niche market that is being virtually ignnored by any major Developer. the latest release (Rift, Old Republic, etc.).” "The MMO space is controlled by somewhere in the vicinity of six games at any given time: World of Warcraft, Eve Online, anything free-to-play that hasn't been shut down, and what I call the 'MMO of the Month,' i.e. Great comment, especially loved the highlighted part.
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