World of Warcraft has ever the pc gameslandschap changed. Different developers have on the mmog market is deposited to a piece of the action to pick up, but successful projects do not usually.
2008 was a good gamejaar, but according to some, is 2009 over. The range of titles will not lie – the games tumbling over each other – but the question is which games actually released this year and which will ‘slip’ to 2010. A developer who’s games are released in which you never know, Blizzard. Some gamemedia make mention of ‘two top titles in 2009, from Blizzard, including StarCraft II and Diablo III. Who do I help with this from the dream. Diablo III is certainly not out this year and the release of StarCraft II is far from certain. As long as the public beta of the title is still not started, I dare to put my hands in the fire to cross. And why would Blizzard make haste with the games? World of WarCraft brings in every month, after all, a ridiculous amount of money in the coffers.
Yes, there we have him again; World of WarCraft. This magnum opus of Blizzard has the pc-gameslandschap changed dramatically. Mmog’s would be the new pot of gold, and the developers threw themselves en masse at the new genre. Many studios thought a piece of the action to pick up. Everyone wanted to piggyback the success of mmo games, but now there are only a few titles that the head above the water. One after the other falls through the ice. Games with a lot of potential, but nobody who play them, games that are too buggy for words, games that their promises do not know how to make games without endgame content and games with a dramatic combination of all these factors together. And in the meantime, a growing number of WoW players growing steadily.
Let’s have a few titles though. Take Warhammer Online. With much noise introduced, but even before the launch had the developer a lot of promises back. The number of cities was drastically reduced, and that while Sieges in the showpiece of the game had to be. The leveling was pretty boring and the game had too little end-game content, The game is still played by a few hundred thousand people, but this had to be the new Dark Age of Camelot, and that was the game.
Age of Conan then. The game was at release simply does not. The game was a huge buggy, the classes were not well balanced and the instances were not. There are too few quests and the announced Xbox 360 version will never come. What a disappointment!
Hellgate London? The large Bill Roper – former – Blizzard – fell through the ice because the game do not know what it wanted to be. A fantasy shooter? An rpg with mmog-influences? A mmo title with shooteraspecten? The technical problems and misery with servers did the game no good. Developer Flagship Studios has closed the doors.
The biggest shit on the mmog area, however, came from the great Richard “Ultima Online” Garriot. Six years, the man had the time, $ 100 million of budget was at his disposal and yet he delivered a stripped-down mmog that during the development time to about ten times of course changed. The promised ‘revolutionary’ shooter controls felt ultimately much too rough, Garriot got on and the rest is history.
For 2009 and 2010, there are a lot of mmog’s on the stack. Of a Star Trek mmog to Jumpgate Evolution, Darkfall to Guild Wars 2. I’m curious how many of these titles fall. And in the meantime working Blizzard calmly proceed to the third add-on for WoW…