Building on Success: The Growth of Atlantica Online

Ralsu · 03-15-2009, 08:24 PM

If Atlantica Can Do It for Free, P2P Games Have No Excuses

Danny "Ralsu" Gourley frequently tells Ten Ton Hammer readers that games need to grow out and up at the same time to stay fresh. It's no small feat for a F2P game to do that since even P2P games struggle to achieve the right formula of depth and breadth. Ralsu thinks developers should look at the example set by Atlantica Online to get it right:

Quote:

The February 18 patch, which was more like an expansion, contained a good boost to the content at all levels.

Read more in this week's Top Ten Free-to-Play Games.

Pox · 03-15-2009, 10:27 PM

Your Mabinogi, Dungeon Runners, and Runes of Magic pictures are in the wrong order.

Ralsu · 03-15-2009, 11:28 PM

Thanks, Pox. Fixed. I had a bad template for my HTML. Template is fixed now, too.

AngryBeaver · 03-16-2009, 12:21 AM

I just couldn't get into the turn based gameplay of AO. It might have been different if they disguised it like the kotor games did. I am enjoying RoM at the moment.

Scykoh · 03-16-2009, 04:09 AM

Me and my friend try out alot of the games on your list. We usually play a day or two and put in 5-8 hours a day, we get our fill with the game and move on. The only game we've ever found good enough to spend time on again is Runes of Magic, and even that is kind of eh. Anyways, what I'm leading up to say is that while most of them haven't been good enough to go back too, they've all been fairly pleasurable experiences while they lasted. With one exception, and that game is Mabinogi. Mabinogi was truely one of the most dreadfull experiences in my MMO career. I've been watching your list since the beginning and I know Mabinogi went up there pretty early. We tried it quite a while ago, and it was awfull, we thought it was a joke and that it would fall off, yet it's now up to #2. We tried it again recently for a few hours to see if we were wrong, and no, it was just awfull. I'm just absolutly confused at how it's #2.

Ralsu · 03-17-2009, 10:01 AM

Scykoh, thanks for coming to share your opinion. What I like about Mabinogi are the strategic combat elements, the alternate paths of character progression, and the variety of things to do.

Still, I'm just one guy with an opinion. The fact that I have a public outlet for my opinion doesn't make me any more right than you or any other reader. Why don't you tell us what you disliked about the game so that others can have your opinion to balance with mine?

Pitdroid · 03-17-2009, 01:58 PM

I've been messing around with Atlantica for a couple of days, and it really is a nice game. Surprisingly so.

My only complaint thus far is the lack of an invert-mouse feature, giving me a bit of vertigo when I try to move around without the auto-move-to-quest feature.