Massively article: The Think Tank -- What's your solution to save closing mmo's

Started by therain93, December 14, 2012, 03:11:20 AM

therain93

@Texarkana - March 5, 2004 - December 1, 2012 -- Imageshack |-| Youtube
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You don't know what it's like.... |-| Book One. Chapter one...

Illusionss

...All those people posting "Move on, let it go, you should not get that attached to a game" have never went through a shutdown themselves.

One day, their favorite MMO will be in the crosshairs. They'll find that stimulating, I bet.

therain93

Quote from: Illusionss on December 14, 2012, 03:40:29 AM
...All those people posting "Move on, let it go, you should not get that attached to a game" have never went through a shutdown themselves.

One day, their favorite MMO will be in the crosshairs. They'll find that stimulating, I bet.
That, or they churn through games like potato chips, never having savored something so satisfying.
@Texarkana - March 5, 2004 - December 1, 2012 -- Imageshack |-| Youtube
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You don't know what it's like.... |-| Book One. Chapter one...


Copper Cockroach

Somebody please explain to Beau, there, that NCsoft weren't the "artists" who had the "right" to shut down "their creation". CoH was created by Cryptic Studios and developed in recent years by Paragon Studios. Period. The fact that NCsoft funded the process is irrelevant. If they'd made the game using a bag of D.B. Cooper's money that they found in the woods, would that make D.B. Cooper the creator of City of Heroes?

Colette

Right with you, Copper.

I'll repeat my fine arts metaphor. Buying a Vermeer gives you the right to exhibit it, charge money for it, the duty to protect it. It doesn't give you the right to say you painted it, or to throw it into a fireplace.

Kistulot

That gave me the urge to make the first Massively Multiplayer Renaissance Art-based Online RPG.

But...

I don't have the Monet.

:3
Woo! - Argent Girl

DrakeGrimm

Quote from: Kistulot on December 14, 2012, 04:27:15 AM
That gave me the urge to make the first Massively Multiplayer Renaissance Art-based Online RPG.

But...

I don't have the Monet.

:3

...you're going to hell for that pun.
We are the crazy ones, the mavericks, the dreamers, the forgotten sons. We color outside the lines for fun. We are the crazy ones! - "The Crazy Ones," Stellar Revival

"We put ourselves in "the attitude of heroes"--and we all became a little more heroic." - VV

dwturducken

I wouldn't use the word "replace," but there's no word for "take over for you and make everything better almost immediately," so we just say "replace."

Little Green Frog

The bittersweet thing about what happened to CoH and SWG is that it brought to public attention the fact that the current MMO business model may be broken and that multiplayer games are inherently ephemeral. You can always reread your favorite book, watch a movie again or revisit a single player game (even if the hardware to run it does not exist anymore or is hard to come by, there are still emulators available and no one seems to object to their existence1). But your stay in an MMO is only temporary and that holds true both for shiny new and popular games as well as for older and more niche products. Now that some titles are shutting their doors for good, a few of them prematurely, concerns will grow. Only good things can come out of this.

[1] - In fact vendors such as gog.com made a business out of selling old DOS games bundled with DOSBox.

Colette

Agreed. I resisted getting involved with MMOs for exactly that reason. I enjoy retrogaming. The look of a game is secondary to that undefinable fun factor, so I keep all sorts of PC classics on hand. Coin-op emulators too. This so-called "abandonware" is now de-facto Public Domain. The cycle for electronic art is simply faster than for other arts, because everything in the electronics world changes fast!

Technology costs continue to shrink with each new generation, and today's overpriced graphics card is in tomorrow's recycling bin. I expect servers are growing less expensive, so why not release a game into public domain once it's definitely reached the end of its profitability cycle? There's no point in hanging onto an economically exhausted game, and you win customer goodwill. The gamers will pay for the new server time... everyone wins.

Granted some of those games may have some life left in 'em, like Asheron's Call. Certainly CoH does.

Illusionss

Quote from: Copper Cockroach on December 14, 2012, 04:07:51 AM
Somebody please explain to Beau, there, that NCsoft weren't the "artists" who had the "right" to shut down "their creation". CoH was created by Cryptic Studios and developed in recent years by Paragon Studios. Period. The fact that NCsoft funded the process is irrelevant. If they'd made the game using a bag of D.B. Cooper's money that they found in the woods, would that make D.B. Cooper the creator of City of Heroes?

It could be argued with some truth that our characters in any given MMO are "art work" very carefully created, honed and crafted by us, and not the company in question. Closing an MMO destroys artwork rightfully belonging to the players.

Makes sense to me, if they want to go down the "hands off someone else's art!" road. NCSoftheaded destroyed my artz. I R dizgruntled.

Mister Bison

Quote from: Illusionss on December 14, 2012, 07:08:25 AM
It could be argued with some truth that our characters in any given MMO are "art work" very carefully created, honed and crafted by us, and not the company in question. Closing an MMO destroys artwork rightfully belonging to the players.

Makes sense to me, if they want to go down the "hands off someone else's art!" road. NCSoftheaded destroyed my artz. I R dizgruntled.
Except when a EULA or something similar-looking tells you right from login that anything you create is the property of NCSoft. :/ I think someone said that the EULA we had in CoH wasn't legal enough, but it besting the argument "they are stealing my art" if it even holds.
Yeeessss....

Triplash

Quote from: Kistulot on December 14, 2012, 04:27:15 AM
That gave me the urge to make the first Massively Multiplayer Renaissance Art-based Online RPG.

But...

I don't have the Monet.

:3

*sniff*

That was beautiful :)

Illusionss

My "acceptance" of a EULA because I have to "accept" it to play, and my belief that it is actually correct, morally or legally are two different things. We didn't destroy their game, but they sure destroyed all our work - thousands of hours, a lot of in-game and real world currency, a lot of purple and otherwise valuable recipes and all.

Destroying something very carefully made by someone else, with care and attention to detail, as well as aesthetic pleasingness is destroying art in my book. I do not love them (NCSoft) for it and I never will, and I am tired of being expected to kowtow in their general direction despite that, it so I think I will take a break from these boards for a bit. Peace.

Little Green Frog

Quote from: Mister Bison on December 14, 2012, 07:20:28 AM
Except when a EULA or something similar-looking tells you right from login that anything you create is the property of NCSoft. :/ I think someone said that the EULA we had in CoH wasn't legal enough, but it besting the argument "they are stealing my art" if it even holds.

Actually it has been said that EULA can be challenged, not that this particular EULA is not legal. But the legality of EULAs is always a little fuzzy. It helps to see them as part contract and part wishlist, with the emphasis on the latter. Just because something is mentioned there, doesn't make it legally binding by default (although companies would like everyone to believe it is). It just gives their legal teams an argument that you knew what you were getting into when you clicked that Accept button. The court, in case an EULA is challenged, doesn't necessarily have to share that point of view.

SirThoreth

One thing that occurred to me for future MMO shutdowns:  why not leave the player with the ability to do something, no matter how limited, with their characters offline?  Give the players the ability to retain something of the characters they put their time and effort into.

Using CoH as an example, had NCSoft done what Codewalker has accomplished on his own with the character creator and client, it wouldn't have left us with quite as much ill will (assuming, of course, we could access our old characters).  Throw in something like Outbreak or similar limited zone done purely offline, and it might have helped stave off some of the sense of loss, allowing players to retain something after the doors closed on the servers.
The hero formerly known as VolksMech (Protector server).

Colette

I'm no lawyer. However, contracts like the EULA can be overturned by a judge, provided the judge decides a contract is "unconscionable." I've personally seen that.

And I think the argument that CoH, over the term of its existence, transcended commercial art to become something more valuable, might hold up, if it came to that.

Victoria Victrix

You guys do know that a Korean court has determined that in-game items that require work to earn or real money to buy are all worth real money, don't you?

http://moremoney.blogs.money.cnn.com/2010/01/22/play-money-is-real-money-says-high-court/
I will go down with this ship.  I won't put my hands up in surrender.  There will be no white flag above my door.  I'm in love, and always will be.  Dido

corvus1970

... ^o^CORVUS^o^
"...if nothing we do matters, than all that matters is what we do."
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