Caswydian

There's no reason you cannot design a console to function more like a PC, using standard USB ports. Also, integrated VOIP will reduce the reliance on typing.

As it stands now, SOE and Sony overall are in a good spot to really capture the console MMO market. Microsoft has shown no interest in developing an MMO, nor has Nintendo (although a Wii-based MMO would be really cool).

If Sony can push the PS3 or PS4 as the MMO console, and develop an MMO framework to allow for rapid development of new MMO content while handling the account management and billing through SOE, SOE and Sony could find themselves in a very good position.

Rahboni

Alex St. John: "Consoles as We Know Them are Gone"

An interesting article...from a guy building kind of a "hybrid". He also gets into why PC's aren't/weren't considered gaming platforms.

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I got kicked out of Barnes and Noble once for moving all the bibles into the fiction section

Flipmode

SOE had its chance to prove console MMOs can be successful with EQOA. That was a solid game and what did they do? Ignore it. Not advertise it. Not fund it. Made only 1 expansion for it and then dump the 3rd expansion when it was 90% complete. Yeah they screwed EQOA the way they do all their MMOs. That poster was right about Smedley having the opposite of the midas touch.

kenman

Lies, don't you remember this commerical?

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Kenman, 70 Berserker
Last Time Played: November 18, 2007

Woot!

Caswydian

FFXI, however, did demonstrate that console MMOs can succeed.

3devious

Phantasy Star Universe also reminds people of how that can go horribly wrong.

Caswydian

That's certainly true, but how many PC MMOs have completely failed? There's many failed PC MMOs, yet people are still developing them in increasing numbers.

kenman

I'm convinced the only reason FFXI succeeded in the least was the Final Fantasy name. You've got countless fanboys that think FFVII is the best game on the face of the Earth, and pretty much every single one of them had to try out FFXI. And personally, I thought playing with a controller sucked and bought the PC version after wasting money on the PS2 one. Then I quit like a month later because the only thing fun in the game were the boat rides. But I guess that's just a matter of opinion.

Pinski claims that games designed around a controller work well, but I beg to differ. Controllers severely limit games, and that's just... not good. Remember casting spells in EQOA? You had a stupid little hotbar that you had to flip through, and it was downright terrible, if I recall correctly the expansion added a second one, but it still wasn't really better than PSO, which while not an MMO, had two crappy little three button pallets that didn't even give you room to put all your spells/items in an easy to use place, so you'd repeatedly be flipping into the menu to cure paralysis, res somebody, or cast megid on a certain type of monster. On a PC game, you either just click from a large selection or use an ass-load of fully customizable hotkeys. The only way to get that range of customization and full control over your character is to use some sort of device with many keys to press, like a keyboard for example. Plus there's generally not even enough buttons to use for basic functions, going from memory you couldn't even jump in EQOA, and this is still an issue with non-MMO games these days. In Gears of War you have one button that's split between taking cover and jumping, and you have to be in certain areas to use them as opposed to any time you want. In the console versions of CoD4 you can't even lean because there's not enough buttons to put them on. Awesome.

I guess sure, games designed around a controller do technically work, but they're simplistic and a mere shell of what they would be if the developers had a larger area to work with. Games shouldn't have to be dumbed down and designed around a limitation, the developer should have the capability to make something as complex as they desire.

Skewing away from the whole controller issue, console games inherently lack the ability to be completely modded. If you don't like a certain part of the UI, too bad, you can't edit it at all. Being forced to use pre-defined crap is not a recipe for success, and I think Valve completely showed that in 1998 with Half-Life's insane degree of mod capability. And third party programs like parsers? Yeah, it's awesome having to route your console's connection through your PC and packet sniff it for the data.

Since I doubt I'm the only person in the entire universe with the gripes I've listed, let me see how a good console MMORPG would have to be made to really work and topple WoW.

Controller - Needs full keyboard and mouse support.
Modability - The entire game needs to be installed to the hard drive and tools provided to modify the UI.
Third party apps - Well shit, I don't see any way to do this except having the console itself running an underlying operating system that people have the capability to design applications for.

Hmm. Now the console is quite literally a PC, fabulous.

And last but not least, the MMORPG can not, under any circumstances, be ran by SOE. I don't think SOE understands this point at all.

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Kenman, 70 Berserker
Last Time Played: November 18, 2007

Woot!

Thundolfe

I actually really, really enjoyed FFXI. The look of it was fantastic and the combat was fun as hell.

On top of that everything was extremely polished. I always had a good laugh about how bad EQ's spelling/typos/grammar was, and here's a japanese game and the english and diction was *perfect*.

What really killed the game for me was:

1) The unflinchingly bad UI (which may have been alleviated by a controller which I never tried)
2) The ridiculously strict grouping requirements, having to be all practically the same level and then booting someone out of a group because they levelled up one higher than you and killed the XP was just awful.
3) Lag playing on japanese servers which led to asian farmers camping named spawns all day (other than that the latency was fine)

I can deal with #1 but #2 is really what caused my wife and I to stop playing.

Rezikai

Ah.. EqoA... i still log in every few months to see the ghost towns that was once a thriving community. I will admit EQoA had it limitations, Kenman is correct, no jumping.. so everything was near run-upable. the world was MASSIVE... running from Everfrost to broken skull rock.. took a few hours depending on your level.. and there was no-zoning. Unless you went to the 2nd continent Odus.

To be fair the controls were eh.. PS2'ish.. i used the conroller for spells/movement but had a keyboard hooked into the USB port to chat with. It was amazing that it was so simple yet so fun.

What worked for EQoA was while it had drawbacks, the limited spell bars and many mechanics simply left out for combat balance reasons( there was no "Miss" or "Risposte" or "Resisted"). They had a solid little console MMO with lots of fans and good initial direction that with cultivation could have easily still been thriving today. But as others have said SOE's judgment was that it wasnt a hit, so they scrapped the 2nd expansion "The Undefoot" leaving only the "Frontiers" expansion as its final progression. To languish as is has since it released in Febuary'03 and Frontiers in November '03.

They've added some content in mini-patches where they revamp a zone or make lots of combat changes to allow more fun with the dwindling population numbers. But for the initial time of the game it had a solid chance to be a stable console MMO.