Death of a Superhero

 

If you haven’t heard, the first superhero MMO, City of Heroes, is planning on shutting its doors for good come November 2012. I am personally of the opinion that this is a good thing. Now before you jump all over me about the folks that work there and the fans of the game that are losing their MMO home, let me explain.

First, I feel very sorry for the folks that are losing their livelihood. I would never wish that on anyone. I hope everyone at the company finds new and gainful employment as soon as possible. Having been unemployed for a year after graduate school, I know how awful that can be when you have a family that depends on you.

That being said, I think all MMO’s should have a life cycle that includes an end date. Why? If we eliminate the large MMO anomaly that is WoW, the MMOverse is a relatively niche entertainment sector. Unless it starts growing by leaps and bounds, there are only so many people to go around. Developers, on the other hand, keep pumping out games. Not at breakneck speed, but they are steadily coming out. Thus we have the development of the free-to-play era where there are more games than people to play them and in order to maintain players, the developers have to lower the barrier for entry to their games.

I think that if games have a life cycle, even if it is 5-10 years, it will allow for the development of new games and reign in the market saturation. People say “the more choice the better,” but at the same time how different are the games really? There is no real innovation because there is so much risk involved and there are so many opportunities to play other games. Developers create games that are clones because they think that is the safest way to make money. There are no pioneers left because the landscape has already been populated.

So here I am advocating that developers close down some games, not to eliminate choice, but to lead to a more vibrant community in the games that we do have and to inspire some innovation. EQ, AO, DAoC, UO, WAR … it is time to go. We will always have the memories, but your time is past. Make some room for the new breed.

-Pid

What’s Up Buttercup?

 

Norn, the real Human race in GW2.

I am in an interesting place right now with my gaming. I am still playing a lot, but I am using a shotgun approach to gaming. Here is my typical gaming cycle these days:

Log into WoW and check the auction house (though not so much since auctioneer stopped working after the big patch). Log out of WoW. Log into SWTOR and fly 4 space missions on my level 35 operative. Log out of SWTOR. Log into TSW just to make sure it is still patched. Log out of TSW. Log into GW2 play for 30 minutes. Log out of GW2. Log into WoW and play for 30 minutes. Go to work. Come home from work. Play either GW2 or WoW for a couple hours. All this and I wonder why I feel like I can’t get anything done in game.

So why all the hopping around?

I’m guessing that the latest Flavor of the Month game (GW2) isn’t as engrossing to me as the rest of my guildmates. Also our once very tightly organized guild is seemingly spread out over numerous games. This is not a bad thing per se, but it makes keeping focus a little more difficult. I kinda miss having that feeling that I need to rush home from work because a dungeon run might be starting up. It was kinda exciting.

Anyway, anyone else out there feeling like they are getting pulled in twelve different directions all at once?

-Pid

[GW2] So there is this new game coming out…

So apparently there is a new MMORPG coming out very soon…who knew?! O.o Not that any of the folks in my gaming group Mercy Gaming have let me get through a day without hearing about it, yeah I’m looking at you DU.

Anyway, I did preorder the game, but I really haven’t paid that close of attention to it. I don’t know why really. People are going gonzo over it. I managed to play a couple of days during the open beta events, but I have played exactly one class and got to maybe level 5.

I don’t get it really. The same thing happened to me with Rift. I wasn’t that interested in the game, and I buckled and bought it only to not like it so much. Isn’t Rift supposed to be a great game? Anyway, I will be playing GW2 to some degree come launch time, but I have a pretty busy weekend so my head start really won’t be. I might get in long enough to roll up a character, but that is about it.

Good luck to all of you who start playing though!

-Pid

Exhumed from the Grave

 

Hi folks!

It has been a very long time since I have posted over here at TMS. I’m actually rather surprised this old site still gets some traffic. Anyway, due to some transition in my career, I will probably have a little more time to do some blogging again! Yay. I don’t anticipate a post a day or anything, but I will definitely be on once in a while. I have been itching to write a post about the gaming community that I belong to anyway, so I at least have an idea or two brewing around in my head. ‘Til then…

-Pid