Last April 2008, Pangya has closed their services in my country.  It was a popular casual online game.  But due to many factors, it has to be the new inhabitants in the online game graveyard.  There are several popular online games that loosing their players and finally ended their services or has a state of “brain dead” in my country.  Nexia, Tantra, RYL, were some of examples where popular games finally ended or loosing players.  We don’t have to cover about unpopular ones like TS Online, Laghaim, Stargate Online, Deco Online, and so on, because it will eventually be dead.  So a once popular online games, doesn’t mean a long lasting popularity.

In Memorial Of:

However, when it comes to game mods, we have different cases.  Some popular mods are even still played until now!  I barely find players that still playing Tantra in the internet café of my country nowadays, but I still find some players training their team in Counter Strike.  I have friends to play many online game together as a guild, but our guilds has been inactive for quite some times in some online games.  But we still routinely play DOTA together.  Apparently, popular mod has longer life compare even to some popular online games.  I believe that we can learn something from here.

Defence Of The Ancient (DOTA) and Counter Strike (CS)

Some people might argue that mod is free compare to online game (well F2P still need money when you need certain items right?).  Now the real question: is it really free to play mod?  At some points, yes it is.  But, in my country, these mods are “not free to play”.  First, mod like DOTA need you to buy Warcraft III.  Second, unless you have your own LAN in your home and you can constantly inviting your friends to your home, you need to go to PC Café.  And that is not free.  Sometimes, it is even cost you more than P2P!  To play RO in my country, you would need approximately US $ 7.  And to have an unlimited internet access to play RO (the bandwidth is not big but it's sufficient), you will need US $ 25.  So the total cost of playing one of P2P online game is US $ 32 a month.  You can play anytime you want, 12 hours a day if you have to.  Meanwhile, I have seen many people playing CS and DOTA for 10 hours in PC Cafés.  If we calculate it, the average price for playing in PC Cafés in my country is US $ 0.4 an hour, so one day of 10 hours playing the mods would be around US $ 4.  If you play them for 25 days, you end up paying US $ 100 a month!  And that is so not free.  But even with that kind of cost to play, popular mods still live up til today, and even gaining more and more fans.

From Community, By Community, For Community

I always believe if your company want to be success, it lies within your customers mind.  You just need them to get it out.  An online game company, need to hear, to seek, and to explore community mind.  Because what makes popular mods have long life, is that they come from community.  They are the incarnations of community ideas and hearts.

Competition

Popular mods always provide us with competition.  That’s why these mods entering WCG and all other world game tournaments.  These competition are different from online games competition, because they offer uncertainty.  Nowadays online games, are quite predictable and certain when it comes to PVP.  Because the most grinded character will have the biggest chance to PK others.  Well, it is a little bit unpredictable when it comes from guild vs guild.  But still, compositions of teams can give us description about the outcome.  Now in mods, it would be different.  Same heroes compositions will still unpredictable in DOTA.  So it is more competitive in mods compare to online games.

Balance and Fairness

The reason why mods always having an update with their version is to make the game more and more balance.  And they are fair!  The more skillful you are, the chance of you winning the game is better.  Even I have some vacuum time of playing DOTA, when I got back to the game, somebody whose skill is not as good as I am, won’t easily win againts me.  On the other side, once I have a long absence in online game, people with longer grinding time will pawn me easily.  Well I know that grinding time should be rewarded.  But please don’t make the game PK enabled without any restriction.  Because it’s not fair!  How come a low level players getting pawned by higher level because he or she has more time to play?  While in mods, a few adjustment after long absence, will determine the skill of the players.  But, if you have more time to play mods and got a training on your skill and strategy, it is very likely you can surpass this kind of players.  That’s what I called fair. 

About balance, I am really pissed off if one tribe in an online game, become inferior because there is no load balance for picking up class and tribe.  One tribe will be so popular, that’s why they own the other unpopular tribe.  It is not balance.  Balance is where you have the same chance to defend your owns with your skill.  Not because of numbers or environments.  I can only heard that Mabinogi implement a different way to PVP but I haven’t got a chance to play the game due to IP Ban (VPN program won’t work in my country).  So I can’t have an opinion about it.  But if they really revolutionize the way people compete to each other, it is very likely this game will have longer life.  In DOTA, I have seen so many cases where 3 againts 5 were winned by the team of 3.  It depend on how good you play the game, it’s balance and fair.

At one side, I know this aspect is subjective.  But I have express my opinion.  I know people might still think that grinding time rewarded by owning lower level is balance.  It’s still valid.  Maybe I just don’t like that idea as balance anyway.

Online game should learn something here.  I dunno whether it is possible to allow players to create their own world in the future or not.  And how to integrate that 3 aspects of popular mods into the game, that’s another challenge.  But if developers can really consider these, I believe they will as long as popular mods have.

Oh, and here’s a fanart of DOTA that me and my friends made, hope all DOTA fans can enjoy ^^.