Another MMO. Yay?

Another MMO........bring on Pokemon!

Looks at the screens ... remembers Fahey is a WoW fanboy and now knows why he wouldn't mind this game.

/wink

This is ignorant Beckerist talking here, but can someone PLEASE explain to me the appeal of a game with NO ending, NO real goals (randomly generated mini-quests don't count), monthly fees and chock-full of dumb people?

Excuse the ignorance, I just truly can't justify spending $180 a year for 1 game that's basically a gigantic random algorithm, vs. spending a third of that ($54 a year) for XBOX Live that supports hundreds (almost thousands) of games.

@beckerist:

Huzzah! My thoughts exactly. I can see the appeal, but its just not for me.

The music game is suppose to be done by Within Temptation and the game engine is the Unreal engine, so it wont be too hard on low endPC.(Within temptation where there before Evanescence by the way .) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLFxe5cVFA0

I wouldn't mind this game. Plus, Born is an easy word to spell. I'm sure the appeal is there.

MMOs certainly have become popular, which is semi-boggling. semi because the nature of MMOs seem to dictate that users would probably subscribe to only a few, if not only one, at a time, since it's usually such an investment in time and money. developers see the overwhelming success of WoW and think "why not?" but then how can they expect a really good turnout when they produce something similar?

@Veltis: too bad their new cd is nowhere near as good as their previous stuff.

Well Fahey, I suppose I shouldn't patronize you by offering platitudes like, "It doesn't matter how powerful your machine is, but how you configure it."

Lies. :-P

Spellborn uses the Unreal 2.5 engine, not the Unreal 3 engine used for GoW. Should run fine on older hardware, as it's at least a 3 year old engine (UT2K4 used the same engine).

@beckerist: The counter to that would be why would someone play a multiplayer game where there are no real goals and all you do is kill random people over and over again. I think the thing that makes MMOS so big is that it gives people a place to role play. There are plenty of people who simply enjoy role playing. Im not one of them though i play mmos for the pvp. PVP done well in a mmo can give the same feeling of accomplishment as say killing a bunch of ppl in a CS game. The only difference is i have to work to build up my chr as opposed to just being able to turn the game right on and jump in for a quick game. As far as subscriptions go thats the one thing i really dont like about MMOs but i can see why they are needed.

I am a fan of the new within temptation cd. She does a lot with her voice and there is no more faggy death grunts. I'll probably give this a go just because I'd like to hear the music.

I hate the faggy death grunts too, it was cool 15 years ago but not anymore, we have real singer in powermetal these days, not dogs bitting someones leg. And "the Heart of everything" is still better than what I hear on radio these days.

yes but Mother Earth and The Silent Force had much better songs. The Heart of Everything isn't horrible compared to other groups, just not very good compared to her other cds. It just doesn't have any songs that are totally orgasmic like Memories or See Who I Am.

@beckerist I don't know if you are really looking for an answer given there are so many in your question already.

For myself I can say that I never liked MMO's, pretty much for the same reasons as you state. In my case that changed though, when I actually started playing one.

With mmo's it's a bit like the old Chinese proverb, something about a journey not revolving around the destination but the road leading towards it.

For me, at first, playing an mmo was something I had to do, research so to speak. You can't be working on creating one (I am Spellborn's sound designer) and not at least try them out, see what makes on tick.

Which is where I got hooked.

I think part of the appeal for me is that progression is social and not just competitive.

With me, you'd have had a good point arguing that MMO's lack core gameplay such as you can find in most single player (and their multilayer component) games.
Instead you find all these things around the core that provide the gameplay; social activities, collecting , discovery and really annoying people being the most important ones in my opinion. So in that sense, core game play is the mechanic of controlling, or taking control over your actions. In an mmo this control is often defined by strategy, collecting and making choices whereas most single player game are more direct, actually letting you control the action instead of letting dice, stats and the time spend decide for you. It's also different to play on a server (mmo) where you can enter PvP (player versus player) battles, instead of fighting only dumb wildlife and monsters (PvE). With human opponents, I get the same rush as I remember from the days I spend hours and hours in quake 3.

With Spellborn we hope to give a new angle to core-gameplay. For instance, combat plays out more like you are used from a single player game (thinking of Rune and Oblivion). You are always working much harder to get to your opponent and given you can set up your own private spell, melee and ranged attack deck, you can customize the way you fight. Just this afternoon in closed beta, we had a level 1 player scare off a level 5 trying to gank the lower level... oops.. that probably doesn't mean much does it : )

Anyway, it's a moot point, as we Dutch say; there's no discussing taste. Just because I learned to like them (against my better prejudice) doesn't mean I could very well not have.

Thanks to Kotaku for the uplifting post; it really made my day to read about Spellborn here. Don't know why reading about it here got me so excited (enough to post a comment) but suppose it's pretty much the same as with an mmo: because I have invested some of my time in it.

@veltis, WT did indeed write music for Spellborn. The score (dramatic music) was done by Jesper Kyd (www.jepserkyd.com).

Matthew Florianz

@raison:
I call your bet and I raise you this reply to these two:

@beckerist:
@Smokemeakipper:

Why even spend time sitting in front of a electrical box fiddling your thumbs and fingers (wii?)Doing something that doesnt even EXIST other than in your mind?

Oh wait, thats pretty much electronic gaming in general...nevermind

LoL of course I'm just kidding, but as a WoW player and a regular game player I can tell you what is an appeal for me about MMO's

Its the grouping/social dynamic of accomplishing something with friends (doing a dungeon etc) and then also having the "killing" of real people pvp (ie halo/counterstrike)

Combine all that with a character I had to build and tweak (but yes grinding and ridiculous drop rates suck) and you've got a recipe for fun.

So basically humans are social creatures and MMO's oxymoronically allow that desire to be filled. Its oxymoronically because you're socializing digitally...but hey thats what makes Myspace so popular.

First, unless your computer is REALLY weak, you should be fine. Spellborn runs on Unreal Engine 2, so performance should be similar to UT2004.

Whats with all of the MMORPG bashing in this thread, though... Did any of you take the time to read anythign about this game before bashing the genre? From what i have read, about the only thing this game has in common with other MMO games is that it has a persistant world... about the only real defining term of an "MMO". The developers have strived to create something different - so dont expect another generic korean MMORPG here... this one could actually be interesting.

@Blaaguuu: I think the ppl in general who bash mmos are the people who have never actually played one, or commited the time to them.

@raison: I disagree. I bash MMOs because I got to max level in everquest 2 only to find that there was absolutely no fun in the insanely hard raids I had open to me. This is coming from someone who would consider normal social hanging out to be a waste of time though. I want to spend my time accomplishing something for the most part.

Yeah there's always the group of disaffected players.

The truth is, MMOs are fun. They're just not fun forever. You got to put in time, effort, and cash, and you get back an entertaining experience.

At the beginning, the time and effort needed for that is small. At the end, it's huge.

It either turns you into an addict, or you get bored and leave. It's an interesting experience.

I'm one of those who gave my heart and soul to World of Warcraft. I bitched about it, I moaned, I screamed bloody murder at the fansite beta-spot givaways. I cursed the glitches, the favoritism, the balancing. You can't please everyone, and most of the time you can't please anyone.

I still loved that game, and if I had the time, effort, and a tad more desire, I'd get back into it. I might take it slower than the first time. It was a race then.

After the 3rd week of raiding though, you realise that it takes up most of your life. Not just your outside of work and school life, but everything.

hey, to all of you, thanks. no idea here, and you RESPECTED THAT. says a lot for Kotaku. really...! thanks!

P.S. The (immediately) above post was written by a VERY drunk Beckerist. I'm impressed by my spellingz and grammarz skillz!!!