Grinding The Gears: The CoG MMO Report

[Goronmon]

Being a bit of a MMO fan, I decided to try a sort of weekly MMO news roundup. Mainly stuff that I find interesting and hopefully hasn't already been mentioned on CoG/IM. I will start off with pretty basic posts and if it seems there is enough interest I can work towards providing more detailed write-ups. So, I'll kick this off with some stuff from the last week or so.

Questions and Answers session about Global Agenda, third-person MMO from Hi-Rez Studios up at MMORPG.com (http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm?page=1&bhcp=1&feature=2682&game=339)

Lots of announcements on the EVE Online front last week. CCP announces they have broken the 50k mark (http://myeve.eve-online.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=2765&tid=1) for concurrent users with 51,675. Support for the Linux client officially ends (http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=625). Also, a skill queue system (http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=621) is in the works (long time player request), though looks like it will be limited to a 24 hour window at this point.

More news about Jumpgate: Evolution finally coming out with interviews from MMORPG.com (http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/297/feature/2669/page/1) and Massively (http://www.massively.com/2009/02/06/massively-interviews-netdevil-on-pvp-and-more-in-jumpgate-evolut/).

More hard times (http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/239/feature/2671/page/1) for Mythic Entertainment.

Galaxy Online, a new MMORTS, is announced (http://www.igg.com/news/news.php?n_id=1716) from the folks at IGG.

Send me a PM (http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/private.php?do=newpm&u=128) with any news tips, suggestions for future posts, or maybe even topics you'd like to see mentioned or discussed.

[Goronmon]

So, is there enough interest in this for me to keep going?

[violent]

Personally, talking about new things going on in MMO's to me is like talking about some kind of super-alcohol to someone on step 5. Though I have to admit, I get a kick from MMO tales of espionage and deceit. It's better than anything on TV.

[MagGnome]

I found this interesting.

I was especially surprised to hear that Eve Online has so few concurrent players. 50,000? I guess that's a decent amount, but it seems really low to me.

[Food Nipple]

I found this interesting.

I was especially surprised to hear that Eve Online has so few concurrent players. 50,000? I guess that's a decent amount, but it seems really low to me.

I'm pretty sure WoW realms are capped at around 4,000 concurrent users, so I'd say that's pretty huge.

[DangerousDaze]

It's definitely of interest to me!

/edit - I found this interesting.

I was especially surprised to hear that Eve Online has so few concurrent players. 50,000? I guess that's a decent amount, but it seems really low to me.

That's 50K playing in the same game. No other MMO can do that because they're almost always split into "realms" or "shards" or some other such means of dividing the load. Realms are completely separate from each other.

[MagGnome]

Thanks for correcting me guys! I had no idea that 50,000 was considered to be a large number in that context.

Now I know. :)

[Goronmon]

Thanks for correcting me guys! I had no idea that 50,000 was considered to be a large number in that context.Obviously it's not a big number compared to WoW, but remember that 50k people is only a fraction of the subscriber base. I think the general metric is that 10%-15% of the playerbase is logged in during busier times. Plus, EVE is definitely a niche MMO that was released almost 6 years ago. It's a 6 year old game with a subscriber base that is still growing. Pretty impressive if you ask me.

[DangerousDaze]

I think the key to this story is that with EVE there is only one "universe". any two people playing EVE can meet each other in-game if they wish to do so. That's not the case with WoW or any other traditional MMO because if you're not logged into the same realm as the other person then they simply don't exist. Nor do your characters typically exist in any other realm than the one in which they were created so it simply isn't possible to visit that other person without major intervention from the developers.

EVE is boasting 50K players all playing together on one server which is something that no other game can come close to (again, largely because EVE's communications overhead is so low).

/edit - the MMORPG on which I work has a practical upper limit of around 450-500 players, largely because it plays like an FPS which has a far higher communications overhead - compare that to most traditional multiplayer FPS games that have an upper limit of up to 32 players.

[roboninja]

Definite interest, Goronmon. Good wrap-up. I was a little surprised not to see a link to the news item this week about the announced class changes in WoW, but maybe that was last week? I am not sure.

[Goronmon]

Definite interest, Goronmon. Good wrap-up. I was a little surprised not to see a link to the news item this week about the announced class changes in WoW, but maybe that was last week? I am not sure.There was actually a news post on CoG about them already here. I'm going to try to avoid rehashing stuff already posted on CoG/IM, both because I don't want to be redundant and to save time/space with the posts.

[Deadend]

I love MMO roundup news!

The WAR news makes me a bit sad, but since they also didn't cut staff to transition from making a game to maintaining a game, it makes sense. I don't want that game to close, as I can see myself going back to it once I hit 80 in WoW.

[Ten19]

This may shock everyone, but as a huge MMO addict, I'll be super supportive of any effort to keep the related news & content flowing to CoG :D

[MagGnome]

Obviously it's not a big number compared to WoW, but remember that 50k people is only a fraction of the subscriber base. I think the general metric is that 10%-15% of the playerbase is logged in during busier times. Plus, EVE is definitely a niche MMO that was released almost 6 years ago. It's a 6 year old game with a subscriber base that is still growing. Pretty impressive if you ask me.

Now that you've explained the situation to me, I am indeed very impressed.

I also had no idea that EVE is six years old already. Time flies!


I love MMO roundup news!

The WAR news makes me a bit sad, but since they also didn't cut staff to transition from making a game to maintaining a game, it makes sense. I don't want that game to close, as I can see myself going back to it once I hit 80 in WoW.

I was under the impression that they already had previously made cuts to transition to game maintenance, and that these new layoffs were a sign that things might not be going so well over at EA/Mythic. Is this not the case?