For any of us reading this article, we have surely played a generally large amount of Massively Multiplayer Online games; the good, the bad, and the clones. We read the news articles and hear from both friends and websites, learning of the newest games to hit the market. The industry is one that is growing, both economically and socially. Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting fellow gamers who could appreciate my background in the industry, people who were actually envious of my experience in the industry, my nerd-style love for these games. It seems that the nerd persona that has floated around gamers for years is slowly drifting away. In fact, I met some people who completely destroyed my stereotypical concepts of what, or rather who, a gamer is. Now, some of the honor in destroying these beliefs can be contributed to games such as Skate, Call of Duty, and other big-hit games that guys were not ashamed to brag about loving. However, as a whole, nothing has

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Hey everyone, this is my first article in awhile as I took some time off for other obligations. I assume I'm still part of the Writer's Club, and I will hopefully be publishing more articles in the upcoming weeks.

 

This article is a look ahead towards the end of this year and into the beginning of next year at the top titles to be released.

 

Aion.

Of course, how could I not list Aion. I've heard many opinions on the game and I've played throughout the betas as well. Despite the common excitement over the game, I don't think the game will be that big of a deal. Besides the great graphics, the game doesn't seem to do what many people have asked for in a game over the past couple years. There's nothing that new or innovative, and the combat system isn't anything special (Although the combo bar is cool). I think the game will be popular at the start like Warhammer Online was, but I believe it will follow the same fate and die off. I think it will sustain enough active players to be a top-runner in the industry, but it's certainly not going to steal away many WoW players, perhaps it will take some from Age of Conan and Lord of the Rings Online though.

In addition, here'

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Is Warhammer Dead Already?

 

     I already miss the days when Warhammer online was filled with people and servers had plenty of people to group with. Believe it or not, I miss the days when I had to wait forty minutes to get into my server, because that's what Warhammer is all about. It's not about playing alone and fighting monsters by yourself to gain levels, it's about playing with other people and working together. The good days were when the pre-order members were playing, and public quests had thirty people working together in a giant warband to complete the task as fast as possible. When you could join a queue and instantly find a scenario to play in. When it was easy to find a guild where you could go on at three in the morning and find enough people for a keep siege. But has Warhammer died already? Sure, there is still a large population on the game, but with the chain effect of the game's quality decreasing when the players leave, is it destined to fail in the next couple months?

     If you think I'm crazy, go on the majority of the servers and try finding a scenario or public quest party from

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     Warriors and mages, knights and priests, quests and monsters. All of these should sound familiar to someone who often plays games of the MMOG genre, or even of the RPG genre. With all of the E3 news lately, there has been one things that has been extremely obvious, and that is that the big title devlopers are all adapting to player's desires. This is evident because of how every big game I have seen has included one new feature that is huge and has been huge in the past, choices! From Prince of Persia to Fable 2, all the way to Fallout 3 and Spore, all of these games give the player a lot of choices and decisions that will alter their gameplay to their own unique style. My question is, why can't the bigger MMOG publishers adapt like console-game developers?

    Let's take a look at how MMOGs can adapt by using a console game as an example. Team Fortress 2 is one of the most popular multiplayer shooters on the computer, and for good reason. Even though you have to buy the game to play it, player's are still in love with the game, but why? The game features the classic RPG feature known as class selection, this gives player's the chance to ...