While the above isn’t a real photo from Titan’s surface, such photos DO EXIST. (You can even hear the actual winds from another world). We can DO stuff like that. When reality is so amazing, how can mere games possibly compete?
That’s the dilemma Blizzard faces as it ramps up the publicity machine for its next MMO, code named Titan. Leaked in a not-so-secret memo last month, Destructoid cornered a Blizzard exec who admitted that Titan would be the long expected follow-up to the world’s most successful MMO ever, World of Warcraft.
Four possible outcomes that I can see. The best case scenario for Blizzard is that Titan does for space-based MMOs, let’s say, what WoW did for fantasy MMOs — utterly dominate the field, and bring in zillions of new players who have never heard of EVE or Jumpgate Evolution or Star Wars Galaxies or Star Trek Online and after playing Titan, wonder why anyone would ever want to play anything else? Additionally, EVE & co would lose most of their players.
Failing that, by the time Titan comes out five or six years from now, it will be well positioned to take up the slack as WoW nears the end of its popularity.
Bad news for Blizzard would be if WoW continued to be insanely popular, and Titan is only a modest success. A million players would be wildly amazingly fantastically super with any other MMO. For Blizzard, only a million players would be seen as an abject, utter failure.
Worst case scenario is that WoW declines in popularity, and since the MMO genre has become synonymous with WoW to most people, nobody really has much interest in Titan. That’s unlikely, to be sure, but it would kill the company.
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MMOs
Massively Multiplayer Online games – our first step into the Metaverse.
Next Rift Beta event: Guardians of the Vigil
This mysterious e-mail just mysteriously appeared in my in-box. My in-box OF MYSTERY! I can neither confirm nor deny that I will be leveling my lower gluteal regions over the weekend as a warrior brought from the past to defend the Vigil against the rifts — and from the evil warriors summoned from the future … Read more
Wizard101: Level 58, and I Feel Fine.
It seemed level 58 would never come to my dynamic wizarding duo in Wizard101. Slogging through grindy grind after grindy grind. Last night, The Friendly Necro kindly help me kill a bunch of Megamind-style Minions in the Science Center for one sort of thing. THAT took forever. Then the quest continued — I had to … Read more
Wizard101: Plant a Giving Tree for Charity
Plant a tree for charity! KingsIsle is using its new Gardening system as an innovative way to give to local children’s charities. Simply buy a Giving Tree seed in its cash shop, plant it, and harvest the unique rewards while helping kids in need. Give the Gift of Magic with this Giving Tree! Last year … Read more
Daily Blogroll 12/14 — Take my game, PLEASE! edition
FFXIV opens with a fantastic character generator, shows you a wonderful cinematic that soon includes you and segues smoothly into the tutorial. You soon are dropped into a crowded inn with quest givers that you will come to know very well. They give out your “guildleves” — kill quests, and your “local leves” — crafting quests, and finally your “field leves” — harvesting quests. Your remaining days in FFXIV will consist of filling up on leves, going to the place they tell you to go, killing trash mobs, making items you won’t be able to keep, and whacking away at harvest nodes.
Once in a very, very long while, you will get to continue the story for a short time — and then it’s back to the leves, hoping for the next bit of the story. Or perhaps to rise high enough in level to see anything but the forest. In a game that almost begs for exploration, it keeps such things as the ferry to other cities, riding chocobos and even travel deep into the forest outside Gridania locked away.
FFXI had its issues — a lot of them — but for the most part, I had fun. Nothing stopped me from exploring (and dodging high level monsters). FFXIV, on the other hand, constantly teases with the fun stuff just over the next horizon. Except over the next horizon are more badgers, bees, animate fungus and so on to slaughter, mindlessly.
If a MMO player had to choose between FFXIV and WoW, I can’t think of anything that would compel them to choose FFXIV. They’d miss questing, an explorable world, any goals, dungeons, etc. They would gain a limited ability to mix and match class abilities to form a custom class of their own choosing, but then, with Rift coming out which goes crazy with customizability (and includes leveling by quests or rift chasing or PvP), it’s not easy by any means to build the case for the game.
Now they’re tossing the game’s director and producer, taking the game back to the workshop for a complete overhaul, and not charging for a subscription until sometime next spring. That puts it just after Rift’s launch, and just before SWTOR’s expected launch in April. I have no idea what they could possibly do to fix the game. It is SO BEAUTIFUL! I guess my only suggestion would be to put some of the fun stuff closer to the start of the game.
On to the blogroll.