Have you been keeping up on all these MMO’s being announced or picking up some face time while making the rounds on the usual sites? I haven’t. From the “meh” screenshots to the titles that make you simply wonder why, it’s borderline shovelware and mostly forgettable stuff. I’m also seeing a lot of games being “Adapted for the Western Market”. Alarms should be going off in your head now *aroooga aroooga*.  Maybe I’m being close-minded, but I have to do a personal inventory here and ask myself whether or not I’ve ever played a game that was adapted for the Western market that I actually enjoyed or one that wasn’t ultimately a weak game.
It’s not all immediately forgettable. A new publisher calling themselves En Masse announced themselves to the world yesterday. When “veterans of the industry” come together forming a new company something big always happens. It’s either a big success or a big failure and it’s always big fun to watch. The first game being pushed out by En Masse is TERA. Right from the press release we have a few interesting things to note. I’m going to be very critical here. Those with heart conditions should not ride.
1) “Working with Korean development partner Bluehole Studio, En Masse Entertainment is preparing to unveil next-generation MMORPG TERAâ„¢ to Western audiences…”
*Arooga Aroooga* Right?
2) “From day one at En Masse,” says Brian Knox, Senior Producer, “there’s been this palpable excitement about TERA.” … and I think you’ve got the recipe for something special in TERA.”
Brian Knox. Let’s look him up under their ‘About Us’ section. Ahhh yes. He was the producer for Aion at NCsoft. According to his Bio, “As Producer of Aion at NCsoft, Knox led the team that published the company’s first true Western title which became 2009’s largest and most anticipated MMO launch and secured dozens of industry awards and critical accolades.” Well, that’s not how -I- remember it. Is that how you remember it? In fact, if this is what En Masse considers a successful introduction of a game to the Western audience then can we expect that same accoladed success with TERA?
3) We’re given a quick ‘About TERA’.
TERAâ„¢ is a next-generation massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) set in a richly imagined fantasy universe. TERA ushers in a ground-breaking interactive combat system that allows you to respond instantly to real-time combat conditions. Unlike faction-based games, TERA unites players everywhere against truly dangerous foes: rampaging monsters, insidious demons, and the many horrors of a world torn apart by the gods.
Lots of hyperbole. Sifting through it all we can glean a few things that, for someone who may not know anything about the game yet, might be key in helping decide if this is a game worth trying. First thing that jumps out at me is “respond instantly to real-time combat conditions” which sounds wonderful in paper but in practice we’ve seen it be less than ideal. Simply an interesting thing to note is that based on this description alone it doesn’t seem that PvP will doable.
Now, bottom line, I know I’m being overly critical. I’m picking on TERA here perhaps a bit too much but I’m trying to get at something. I don’t find Aion’s “Westernization” acceptable when all is said and done. I’m also wanting to illustrate that if developers or publishers want to market their games accurately they need to change their current way of doing it. That ‘About TERA’ does the game more harm than good. It truly told us nothing about the actual game.
In my opinion the way in which these games are presented should be more straight forward. That’s how I would handle the marketing for a MMO if it were my job to tell players what they can expect in my game. What does it mean to be next-generation? Justify it to us. What is ground breaking about the interactive combat? Explain to us how the real-time combat conditions differentiate your gameplay from that of a more traditional approach. How does your game unite players everywhere?  That would be an awesome job in my opinion. Be the guy who helps a company present their game to the players in such a way that they’re able to actually give real information while still getting players excited. I think the same job could also facilitate having the company create a game that the players want. Those two things are lacked universally in the industry.
I think the issue arises from trying to appeal to too many players all at once. They don’t want to release anything(press or product) too specific to avoid making it only appealing to a niche, so instead we get vague responses and games that feel like they’re off in a way we can’t put our fingers on…
Xsyon is one mmo being pushed out soon that has a refreshing clarity to its claims. Whether those claims are worth anything, or the game will be in any way good remains to be seen, but I appreciate the way they have communicated about it.
I also like the fresh ideas they clearly communicate, though I doubt it will end up being a game for me in the end.
To understand why mmos are what they are today you have to look back several years.
But before that, make a list of your personal favorites, the games you have the fondest memories of, and the ones that you simply think were awesome. Now take that list and look at the release dates of all those games, I bet most of them were before 2004.
The simple fact is the entire industry changed after WoW. After the success of WoW, many people who had never produced a mmorpg or even played one sat up and took notice. And what is it they noticed? the cash rolling in thats what.
Why else has the number of mmo games skyrocketed in the last few years? The hard fact to face is that most gaming companies out there today view the mmo market as just a cash grab now. I think they recognize that they aren’t going to pull in WoW type numbers after watching many try and fail to do so(see WAR,AOC).
Now Im not bashing WoW in any way, its a great game, just not my cup of tea, but I dont begrudge them their success, I just lament what they inadvertently did to the genre.
A perfect example is SWG, whether you like it or not, the only reason they pulled the rug out from under that game was because Lucas Arts saw the numbers being put up by Blizzard and said “Whoa, I want a piece of that action”.
Sorry about the length…and yes I realize hoe jaded I sound.
The only MMO I’m currently even remotely interested in is Heroes of Telara, and who knows if they are going to pull anything off or not.
Frankly, the genre is done for me. I realized after bouncing around between MMOs for the last year+ that the genre is just no longer producing the kinds of games I want to play. I still like to keep up because I have some sort of sick hope that eventually something will come up that looks good, but realistically speaking, like every other one of my hobbies that has gotten popular, its been ruined.
Sentry, I would have said growing the market and attracting more companies to invest in producing an MMORPG was a GOOD thing!
For sure, it can’t be denied that there has been a wave of games trying to stick rather too close to WoW’s formula, in the hopes of biting off a slice of its pie, but I’d like to think that we’re getting past that. Look at the last few biggish releases and the big upcoming titles: I’m struggling to think of a single fantasy title amongst them, for a start.
Fantasy has nothing to do with it. Fantasy, Sci Fi, Steam punk, Post Apocalyptic. ANY setting can make a great MMO. Its the game mechanics that matter. One could conceive of a fantasy game with a great economy like EVE, or a sci fi game that perfectly replicates WoW.
Looking back, I think the move to the “questing” model as THE model for MMOs is the turning point for it going back for me. It led to individual quests/quest lines mattering more than the game world, encouraged MMOs to replicate a single player experience, and so forth. Until we see another MMO that says “you know what, other people matter in this game, if you can’t handle that why are you wanting to play an MMO” I’m not going to be interested.
@Carson
Im not trying to sound like an elitist. The market did grow, but it brought in the “wrong” crowd, for me at least.
Id classify myself as an older mmo gamer who wants more of a sandbox game, not a themepark where we all march in an orderly fashion from one ride to the next in the order the developer tells us to, which is what we get now.
Sadly, the new mmo demographic does not include me, or others out there who share my desires for a game. We are simply not as profitable as the market that was attracted to WoW.
Prior to WoW, if a mmo had 300k subscriptions, it was doing fan-freakin-tastic. After WoW, those kind of numbers are deemed near failure.
WoW was able to pull people into an mmo who had never even thought about playing one, and those people are here to stay, like it or not. It raised the standards of what it means to be successful in the mmo market, and there is no going back.
Personaly, I cant believe what passes for an mmorpg today, look at STO, basically take PotBS, slap a star trek skin on it and call it a day, just make sure you remove the player driven economy and the innovative pvp system first.
I want to touch base on a game Mahlah mentioned.
Heroes of Telara is one of the only games being developed that I think if (and it’s a big IF) they can pull off what they have in their game description, then I think we’ll finally move the genre forward. A lot has to do with not knowing what will be in store for you every time you log on. It was always the unknown ahead that made the firsts of the genre so engaging.
Here’s a list taken from the site:
**Rise to the challenge of the unexpected, use the deep sub-class system to customize your abilities to prevail and become the hero.
**Engage in intense “one vs. many” battles where enemy groups behave as a horde, while you fight using an easy-to-learn combat system.
**Experience the world and share your journeys with players of all levels.
Your destiny is in your hands.
**Train in every profession and engage in any crafting activity. Use the dynamic class system to specialize in prestigious class abilities.
**Unite with your friends and plan play-sessions around scheduled events that change on a regular basis. Exciting area quests offer seamless grouping and unique rewards.
**Join a faction and participate in the struggle to control territories where you monopolize access to epic rewards.
**Explore a stunning adventure-filled world as you achieve rewards for your heroic accomplishments —a world completely open to you, regardless of your rank.
I know at this point it all sounds good on paper. We seen it before, but I really like the direction they are shooting for.
Also for Keen, wasn’t Allods westernized and something you are currently enjoying? Or did you basically just mean the Korean imports in your blog.
I think the biggest problem is that the gameplay experience is completely saturated for so many potential customers. Having played thousands of hours of WoW, quest-driven MMOs leave me with a bad taste in my mouth.
I really have to say lately it’s been a regurgitated effort, a copy and paste vibe to most of the companies trying to have the next big thing. The exceptions being the MMOs who don’t try the orc and elf – fantasy. I say this because at least they are trying a different route. Sadly I tend to get the feeling if your not going to do fantasy your either going to go the sci-fi route of either post-apocalyptic or space/future. I mean don’t get me wrong I’m a huge sci-fi buff but the P.A. MMOs just aren’t my stuff and the space/future always leaves you in portraying a ship at one point and IMHO like in EvEs case maybe a bit to overly complex.
That game description doesn’t tell me anything.
“Interactive combat system”? I certainly wouldn’t want to play a game that DIDN’T let me interact with the combat system. That doesn’t sound fun.
Allows me to “respond instantly to real-time combat conditions”? I’m having trouble figuring out what alternatives there could be. When am I meant to respond to combat conditions? Five seconds later? Unless they’re making sure you understand that this isn’t some kind of turn-based game.
“Unlike faction-based games…” WoW and most other fantasy-based games have you fighting against monsters/demons/horrors AS WELL AS the other faction. Why is this game limiting itself in this way?
TERA is, for those unfamiliar, made by basically the team which was making Lineage 3 for NCSoft before that … “failed”. Expect a lot of it to be similar to Lineage 2, and to what we saw in previews and concept art for Lineage 3. What they mean by “not faction-based” is basically: Open-world PvP. Attack anyone (nearly) anywhere, anytime. Face the consequences.
That said, I hope they don’t “westernise” it too much. But then I like Lineage 2, the old Korean grinder, the way it is.
@Dismantled:
**Rise to the challenge of the unexpected, use the deep sub-class system to customize your abilities to prevail and become the hero.
–> Alternate Advancement System (FE/SWG etc)
**Engage in intense “one vs. many†battles where enemy groups behave as a horde, while you fight using an easy-to-learn combat system.
–> Skirmish System (LOTRO)
**Experience the world and share your journeys with players of all levels.
Your destiny is in your hands.
–> Mentor System (AoC/WAR) [artificially raising/lower your level]
**Train in every profession and engage in any crafting activity. Use the dynamic class system to specialize in prestigious class abilities.
–> Alternate Advancement System
**Unite with your friends and plan play-sessions around scheduled events that change on a regular basis. Exciting area quests offer seamless grouping and unique rewards.
–> Public Quest System (WAR) and Skirmish System
**Join a faction and participate in the struggle to control territories where you monopolize access to epic rewards.
–> Siege or RvR System (War/Aoc)
**Explore a stunning adventure-filled world as you achieve rewards for your heroic accomplishments —a world completely open to you, regardless of your rank.
–> Accomplishment/Deeds System (Lotro/WoW/War/Champs)
So err..how is it moving the genre forward? By “having it all” ? This is the kind of “vague-lets-try-and-cater-for-everyone” PR babble…even though nothing in the list sound “revolutionary” by itself. When i think “moving the genre” forward” i’m not thinking “cobble all the current features together and see which combination works” , rather what we need now is something totally past all these sub-systems. These sub-systems i listed still pretty much imply “kill 10 rats” .
so no one else finds Xyson interesting in the least?
Keen, just look for it on youtube. here’s one video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5R4X_0R-C4
TBH it looks pretty impressive. The advantage of westernizing korean games is that, like allods, they already exist in another market and you can see how they play and stack up.
TERA has quite the pedigree behind it, and as a 7-year long L2 player, I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on it. (They have a lot of the ex-Lineage 3 dev team)
It looks great in motion but like most asian games, Westernisation is a buzz word to attempt to alleviate fears, rather than anything of substance.
With that said, even bad management and empty promises can’t make a good game be bad, L2 was horribly managed in the West (lots of bad translations rendered some thing unplayable for a while, like class change quests) and to this day has some of the worst support I’ve ever experienced. But the game was awesome, and was exactly what a lot of people, over 120,000 subs at it’s peak, were looking for.
So if you consider that an already niche game, coupled with terrible support and management from NCsoft, can achieve a subscription number that very few MMO’s, even those made in and for the Western market, can, then there’s no reason to write off a game like TERA.
@silvertemplar
I can see your point, but just remember that their world is not static like all the games you listed and will have regular events that reshape the world depending on the communities reaction and participation.
*looks forward to The Secret World*
I’m still a big MUD player, my favorite past ones were always level less, class less systems like TSW is supposed to be. That might be another few years down the road though.
Aion was a successful launch if you use only their criteria:
1. Awards of some kind (these don’t mean much to me).
2. People who bought the boxes.
Where it’s not a success is in the more important endurance tests of:
1. Being good.
2. “Conversion” of trials to Subs (I tried it with about 10 people, none of us subscribed).
Pre-Orders of games (not just MMOs) and then opening week sales seems to have become everything – just like the “opening weekend box office” for films. The goal now seems to be shove them out the door ASAP, make a quick profit and run before people realise the game sucks and is far from complete (offering pre-NDA Lifetime Subs was a classic trick pulled for Champions).
So yeah, shovelware. I’ve actually now got no capacity left for excitement about MMOs after being burned by WAR, Conan, Aion and Allods (I never even managed to log into Allods but the Cash Shop Fiasco ended all interest). The new Blizzard MMO and KOTOR might have me peeping over the parapet but for now I’m letting the crap fly overhead.
And that definately includes Star Trek – that looks diabolical.
Knee-jerk impressions;
– Aion. Aion. Aion. What do we make of thee. There was a lot to love about Aion but equally a lot to hate with a fiery passion. There was no middle ground. So, the idea of Aion’s producer making another MMORPG leaves me wondering, “what part of Aion was he responsible for? … the beautiful art & landscapes, creative fantasy setting, incredibly in-depth economy, intelligent stat design and fantastic class designs? …. or the quest design, pace of progression, PvPvE implementation, total lack of group/community motivation, poor PvE instances or general level of the ‘grind’? (Or was he just responsible for converting ‘Asian Aion’ into ‘Western Aion’? In which case I wouldn’t consider him to have ever done anything)
Aion is such a polarizing game for me, without specifics I don’t like the reference.
– I LOVE the fact that they came out and admitted a dedication to pure PvE play. Almost every major title lately has been motivated by a dream to create the next PvP MMORPG with each being more disappointing than the next. Meanwhile, the only monster-success in the industry parades on pumping out the only real decent PvE content available. There needs to be more PvE MMORPG competition and its much easier to compete as a PvE game without all the frustrations that accompany PvP (Re: balance, server-side combat, motivational factors, latency, etc.).
– ANOTHER game about a world torn apart by gods we’re supposed to fix? This good/evil fallible god theme is getting tired. Very tired.
– Totally agree with Keen. I’m sick and exhausted of every game’s announcement declaring itself “revolutionary”, “next generation”, and “ground breaking” without a single shred of reference or an example … don’t blow smoke into a jaded room and expect anything but an opened window. I wish that for once a company would lay off the hype-pipe, have some humble pie, and let their product speak for itself. This is the information age where nothing you can say will drown out the voice of the internet and after seeing so many highly anticipated games take the same route in hyping their failure-to-be the MMO gaming community is beginning to expect disappointment from anything we’re told to be excited about.
As long as so many people keep falling for the preorder hype and keep dumping good money into these lackluster games the pendulum is never going to swing the other way.
I won’t be truly excited until they start designing and marketing new mmorpgs for specific and acknowledged subsets of the mmo audience instead of the entirety of it at once. I hope we get there soon.
I thought the INTRODUCTION to AION was successful. The game kinda dug its own hole from there for a variety of reasons we won’t go into here. But, the INTRODUCTION was freaking spot on. Aion had the every chance to thrive.
More games is good, period.
Try ’em. If you like ’em, fine. If not, move on. What one person thinks is a total waste of pixels may be someone else’d dream game.
Several of my favorite or potential favorite MMOs either never even got out of beta (Ferentus) or never attracted more than a few hundred players (Rubies of Eventide). Some MMOs that probably aren’t actually very “good” I just immediately like (NeoSteam). MMOs I never really expected to enjoy I end up playing fervently for months (W101, Fallen Earth). Others get uninstalled in a shorter time than it took to download them (Atlantica).
Trying new MMOs is always fun. My complaint isn’t that there are too many, it’s that there’s not enough hours in the day to give them all a fair shake.
I think MMOs that describe themselves as next-generation may actually be referring to Star Trek:TNG – same thing with new characters and shiny new special effects. Perfectly describes most of these “new” MMOs.
I share your disdain for the buzz-word “adapted for the western market” as its rarely a recipe for succes in itself, and perhaps not the best market strategy. That being said I dont think you would like being the PR guy. You wouldnt have the freedom you enjoy as a blogger / independent critic.
@howclever: I share this view that quest driven mmos have been done to death, and that nothing puts me off more, when trying a new mmo, than getting attacked by massive amounts of quest text, but I dont enjoy the sandbox EVE style play either. I hope Bioware will raise the standards on that front though.
Mostly I am looking forward to Guild Wars 2 as I think ArenaNet have the best design philosophy out there, when it comes to mmos, and I love their business model 🙂
Hype, hype, hype, froth, froth, froth. I really wish developers would just shut up untill they can actually tell us somthing about the game instead of vague superhyping.
@Holgranth
I wish they would too, but what incentive do they have to stop? People keep buying into the hype.
“Have you been keeping up on all these MMO’s being announced or picking up some face time while making the rounds on the usual sites? I haven’t. From the “meh†screenshots to the titles that make you simply wonder why, it’s borderline shovelware and mostly forgettable stuff.” –> Someone seems to be turningg into a grumpy and disgruntled MMO player. 🙂
But i know how you feel and i feel the same way.
“I’m also seeing a lot of games being “Adapted for the Western Marketâ€. Alarms should be going off in your head now *aroooga aroooga*. Maybe I’m being close-minded, but I have to do a personal inventory here and ask myself whether or not I’ve ever played a game that was adapted for the Western market that I actually enjoyed or one that wasn’t ultimately a weak game.” –> uhm… Keen? You know that game that you have been writing about for the last one/two months called Allods? Well, that game is Russian. It was adapted to the western market and you loved it!
Now if you are refering to adapting to the west the Korean/japanese/chinese MMOs then that’s different. However, you should consider that some people like them.
And what about if you compared the quality of the adapted Asian MMOs recently released to the Western MMOs that were released in the same time frame?
Because if you asked me Aion managed to be more successfull than Star Trek Online, WAR, AoC and couple other Western MMOs released a bit before and around the same time.
IMO, the current crop of MMOs is complete crap and the only gem that came out in the last year (Allods) is being killed off by greedy developers/publishers.
All of these games lack something to make them truly great.
My next try at an MMO is going to be Fallen Earth. They seem to be developing the game in the right direction and lately i have only heard good things about the game.
Since i can’t edit…
I just hope that the next batch of MMOs is decent enough! I have some hopes for The Secret World, SW:TOR, WH40K and i am also keeping an eye on Black Prophecy.
And i want to know anything about Copernicus (McFarlane and Salvatore working on an MMO just sounds too good to be true)
GRINDER! Next, please.
“That ‘About TERA’ does the game more harm than good. It truly told us nothing about the actual game. In my opinion the way in which these games are presented should be more straight forward.”
Agree with you 150%. Many companies think that being vague is beneficial because it attracts interest but doesn’t paint them into a corner until launch. Wrong! By being vague, you are doing the worst thing possible to your customer audience. What’s that? Assumptions! The more people assume things based upon vague descriptions, the more they will probably be let down when reality hits at the game launch (or beta).
So ya, I’m with you. If you can’t get specific about game details or mechanics, don’t release anything. If you’re going to release details, make sure they are as specific and understandable as possible (even including video highlights to explain new innovative gameplay mechanics). Simply put, the more you can make your “official” site like a “fan” site, with lots of detailed info, the better it will be. People don’t want to read stuff they can get off the back of a game box. They want something substantial with some depth to it, that is updated at least weekly with a new detailed tidbit of content prior to the release.
You consider Aion a failure because it didn’t hold your interest for more than what? Two months? Well guess what. No MMO met your standards or held your interest for more than two months in a long, long time.
Aion was probably the most successful MMO (from a business prospective – not l33t g4m3r prospective) of 2009. You wouldn’t put that on your resume if you were Brian Knox? If you were En Masse you wouldn’t be proud of advertising this employee?
Has nothing to do with the time it held my interest. It has everything to do with how the game was designed. Let’s look at 2009’s list of new MMO’s. Amazing competition there. Not.
Has nothing to do with Brian Knox. I don’t know the guy well enough to make a comment on him personally. The way they tout Aion though is certainly not how I remember, and probably not how the majority remember, it going down.
@Publius: Absolutely correct. Aion is a failure because of its inability to hold interest for most players past the middle level ranges as well as its inability to push content to keep capped players from leaving the game. It has a lot more problems than that, but thats the short answer.
From a business perspective, I would not be touting this particular person when you can go ahead and tout the collective pedigree of those ex NCSoft, Microsoft, Blizzard and other company employees that make up your team.
The problem with a MMO like Tera, and more specifically a company like En Masse, is that it is not their work they are “producing”. The major reason why Aion has not found a large niche in Western countries is not because its not a good base game. It is because NCSoft does not control the actual game from the ground up.
The successful MMOs of the last several years have been those that have production teams and development teams that are near the same. WoW is at the forefront of this, but games like EQ and FFXI also have this. Looking forward, we see SWTOR produced by Bioware. We do not want anymore small Asian games being westernized. We want the games to be created for the masses to begin with. The need not be “English” games, but they should be targeted towards the world from the get go, not be niche and become larger.
Touting Aion the game of 2009 is akin to promoting AoC as the game of 2008…its pure marketing speak but to those of us who experienced these two lackluster years worth of MMOs, it’s almost laughable and even counterproductive to some extent.
Any more, if I see “Korea”, “MMO…”, and/or “Western market” in the same paragraph, I say, “Hell no!” and run the other way…
Any MMO from that side of the world is crap, in my experience. Often beautiful crap, but crap nonetheless.
Gamers need to stop thinking that press releases are written for them.
Press releases are written for reporters, investors, and executives. They are meant to grab the attention of low-attention-span suits who don’t have time to really understand anything about games besides whether or not they will make money.
Companies are not going to write press releases for gamers. That’s what marketing is for. That’s what community management is for.
Press releases have a specific format for a specific audience. It’s as much its own style of writing as a movie script or a haiku.
Complaining about a press release for doing its job as a press release is a futile effort. Stop it.
Then you would think they would have more dollar signs, right? Last time I checked the suits didn’t understand a lick of the gamer jargon. So what’s with the flowery language?
Perhaps in an idyllic sense community management is for marketing. Reality check? It’s damage control these days.
Press releases put up on the front of websites get highlighted on every gamer news site. The things they say make it onto feature lists.
I’ll stop when you stop. Sounds fair to me.
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