Danny "Ralsu" Gourley has been taking a lot of heat over his choices for the best free-to-play games. He thought it'd be easy to explain his selection criteria until he sat down to do it. Then he realized that it's a very subjective process. Rather than getting more prescriptive in his process, he ended up less so. What's the deal?
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To be completely honest, even I (a huge proponent of F2P gaming and microtransaction models) find the quality of F2P games leaves a lot to be desired. Atlantica Online is far and away the exception to the rule, and the title from NDOORS is good enough to stand toe-to-toe with P2P offerings like Warhammer Online in my opinion.
ya' know, despite not liking many games ON that list it gives me an overall better feeling to look at it and know i can just go play them at whim. like hard earned cash vs. ill gotten gains.
in reading the article all that really stood out as an error is that it is cheaper and easier to make games now that it was 10 years ago, it isnt getting more expensive at all. maybe companies are just choosing expense since they think if they fail it is a write off. with things like gamebryo, speed tree, and the countless other programs that allow just about ANYONE to make a 3d mmorpg i am surprised there arent hundreds of indie ones floating around. granted you still pay through the nose for things like MAX and MAYA, and great coders or graphic artists dont come cheap but it is still way easier than having to start from scratch and create the engine (just hop on the bandwagon and use UNREAL 3). at any rate..
it had to come down to this i guess, so may as well hash it out.
MMO: a stupid acronym from day 1. none of these games have any actual mass at all beyond the sub-atomic level. im all for changing it OR just continuing to ignore it as one of humanities great blunders. either way to us it means you can play it with others online.
F2P: should mean there is no reason to ever pay anything to experience the game and all of its content. free is free. internet connection aside (and if you dont have an internet connection you are kinda a tard for trying to get into mmo's) the cost REQUIREMENT should be 0$.
GOOD: unfortunately purely subjective, however some of the more major things that count towards a game being good would be.. lacking bugs and being highly refined, putting players in immersive atmospheres that can make them forget they are looking at a screen as opposed to being in the screen, easily understandable and responsive controls, making players care about their character through development and advancement. these things would be in EVERY good game, so it doesnt matter if they are beating the "look im an elf with a bow!" M.O. to death (or the "oh my gawd zombies!" one for that matter) good games can do that.
i think you should do 2 lists personally, 1 for games with 0 monthly fee (letting you put games like guild wars, titan quest, fasaria {asif} w/e on the list) and 1 with like best FREE online experiences (again by saying experience instead of game you get to put wizard 101, TCoS, and fusion fall on the list since you are not saying they are full games) or maybe best free things to try.
or split the crap out of it and do like top 10 cash shop games, top 10 budget games, top 10 kid games, top 10 games scheduled for NA release, top 10 etc. etc.
as it is now or has been i dont see why ragnarok online isnt on the list, yea its dated, simplistic, 2.5D and all but when you ask people in general what the "best game ever" is you almost always end up with things like "metroid", "pac man", or "a link to the past", so apparently best is best no matter the age (plus im pretty sure the global numbers coupled with the private server numbers and low sys requirements put it up there on the most played games in the world list).
I've never liked the MMORPG tag for the genre. My personal definition of it is anything that is exclusively online and has some form of persistant world technology to it. So it would include Guild Wars, World of Warcraft and APB, but not Battlefield Heroes.
The whole chat lobby then single unconnected maps / zones, is a casual game as far as I'm concerned.
F2P should be anything you can pick up and play without paying money upfront for it. How much you can play before you have to pay is irrelevant, as there is no such thing as a free game, the money supporting it has to come from somewhere.
I've never liked the MMORPG tag for the genre. My personal definition of it is anything that is exclusively online and has some form of persistant world technology to it. So it would include Guild Wars, World of Warcraft and APB, but not Battlefield Heroes.
The whole chat lobby then single unconnected maps / zones, is a casual game as far as I'm concerned.
F2P should be anything you can pick up and play without paying money upfront for it. How much you can play before you have to pay is irrelevant, as there is no such thing as a free game, the money supporting it has to come from somewhere.
eh... by that definition of free to play every game with a 1+ day trial is free to play...and it just isnt that simple. private servers run as total no commitment free to play servers alot, sure you could argue that you pay for stability and data security...but then i would ask for the tabula rasa and hellgate london characters i had to be reborn since i did pay for said stability and security.
lobbies and instancing dont bother me at all, i see global chat as just another lobby and instancing as a way to reduce ks'ing and ass hatters. lots and lots of games have lobbies, i have just come to see it as evolution, much like the 3d action driven state of today's mmorpg's does not separate them from the menu driven 2d days of old as far as being rpg's. NOT that i have ever been one to sit in a lobby for any amount of time; i almost prefer them to putting another tard on ignore in general chat every 20 min. though.
the thing is with all the homogenization that is going on it will in the long game kill the whole genre. MMORPGFPS dancing guitar games that are 30$/mo with cash shops full of angel wings and exp pots that work even while you are crafting new gunshoes on your alt while on the same account the main character happily macros away quests on autopilot while you browse porn that involves midgets and alligators. also games like "your mom" online will be so realistic and immersive that they are just plain boring despite winning game of the year.
Well, a trial is a trial, it is not the game itself but a taste of it. It is semantics, but sometimes you have to take the literal meaning of the words.
I like this new format alot. Can you make the watch list similar to the actual top 10 list though? Complete with a graphic and brief synopsis about the game. This article is a great read each week. Thanks Ralsu
the reason the trial thing matters is games like fusion fall, the chronicles of spellborn, and 1 i cant recall currently have this thing where you can play them for free up to a certain point and then its put up or ....well or keep starting new characters or new accounts or just roam around places you have already been with what you have.
i seem to remember pristontale 1 having a system where for example it was free to play until level ..35 (i cant remember, was around there and works for illustrative purposes) after that you had to subscribe or they would lock that character. it is in essence a trial, but at the same time it isnt in the same league as any contemporary p2p model. heh, how about a "free to play but...." list?
pretty much some criteria has to be set/changed OR the title of the list has to. maybe do it as...free to play list, 5$/mo list, 10$/mo list, cash shop game list.....i dunno, its complex.
the main aspect of it being free to play is that you should be able to get pretty much the same drops and go to the same areas playing the same classes (i sense this coming soon to a f2p game near you, i think grand chase or wind slayer already has it) as anyone using a cash shop or a sub throughout the game, or atleast be able to trade for cash shop items. the cash shops are what keeps the servers going, its like a charity kinda since you dont GOTTA donate.
another thing to look at is location, i guess the list only applies to english, but perfect world never got noted until it launched its international servers.
The longer I look at this problem, the harder it gets to solve. Basically, a free game to me has always been one that costs nothing to download or install (ruling out Guild Wars) and nothing to access even end-game content (ruling out Wizard101). So long as a piece of equipment is not needed to successfully complete end-game content, I don’t consider lack of access to it without paying to mean much (leaving Dungeon Runners in the mix).
This pretty much sums up how I feel. Well said. In regards to lobby-based games, while I don't necessarily consider them MMOs, I do think they deserve a spot on the list.
What is a Free MMOG?
Linear Mode
