Sharing on Obsidian Architecture – Desolis Underground, Trolls, Tantalus Consortium, Player Owned Town Editor, GameFest, Plant Decos, and More!
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?p=52099
Such a good write up on SOTA by TenTonHammer. Again do note, the game is NOT for everyone. But the new concepts will definitely set the new standard for future MMOs.
The interesting thing about SotA is that it isn't made for the mass market, it's made for fans of a specific genre of MMO that over time, have grown to be a very small percentage of the MMO community. Back when fast Internet wasn't easily accessible and you had to live within x number of miles from some technological wizard that would deliver speeds up to 50kb/s to your house; there wasn't much interest in the genre or a big audience for it. Technology was limited making it hard to create an MMO that was easily accessible and people were forced to conform to mechanics that would otherwise be considered heresy in the modern world. We can all agree that the difficulty of legacy MMOs wasn't just the grind, it was dealing with the UI, the buggy systems, the constant need for GMs to fix the game, etc.
Now, MMOs can have FPS combat, they can have action combat, and the entire system can be ran in anyway possible. Much like older cars though, players still remember the "good 'ol days" of legacy MMOs and crave the experience, even if you had to sit on a coca-cola crate and shift with a wrench, it was "good." It's hard to build a game for a group with very refined taste and specific desires that might not make good mechanical sense, but makes great gameplay sense - especially for the way they like it.
Another issue with MMOs is that they become giant platforms built out without any feedback by the people who are going to pay and play it. They're launched and it has two chances to be good, assuming it takes a subscription. It's either good at launch and maintains a crowd or it's good when it goes free-to-play after essentially the same process that SotA has gone through - vetting by the community.
more @ http://www.tentonhammer.com/columns/res ... d-true-mmo
