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Forums - Gaming - Could World of Warcraft or a next-gen MMO work on a console?

Toefactor on 17 February 2009
Ail said:

Not going to happen anytime soon and the reason is simple :
no Mods support on console...

The average Wow user runs 3-4 mods at the minimum and console maker so far do not allow the release of player made add-ons to games ( and I do not see them changing that in the near future)...

Every raider pretty much run a threat meter and a boss mode, casual runs Auction House mods, quests mods and the list goes on forever.
Every major patch day myself and my whole guild spend 1h updating all our mods...
They are a critical part of the game and one of the reason the game has been so successful

 

 Very true, but how hard would it be for Blizzard to create a list of mods that they deem "standard mods" that they could release as DLC on XBL?

 

They would simply have to have someone test and re-work them to work with whatever the current patch is. That's literally a 1-2 man job if they started working on it on a test realm a few days before the patch went live.



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mexitalrish on 17 February 2009

yeah i think so. i remember back when people thought an fps couldn't make it on consoles and now look. it could definitely happen and do well



Ail on 17 February 2009
Toefactor said:
Ail said:

Not going to happen anytime soon and the reason is simple :
no Mods support on console...

The average Wow user runs 3-4 mods at the minimum and console maker so far do not allow the release of player made add-ons to games ( and I do not see them changing that in the near future)...

Every raider pretty much run a threat meter and a boss mode, casual runs Auction House mods, quests mods and the list goes on forever.
Every major patch day myself and my whole guild spend 1h updating all our mods...
They are a critical part of the game and one of the reason the game has been so successful

 

 Very true, but how hard would it be for Blizzard to create a list of mods that they deem "standard mods" that they could release as DLC on XBL?

 

They would simply have to have someone test and re-work them to work with whatever the current patch is. That's literally a 1-2 man job if they started working on it on a test realm a few days before the patch went live.

1) Blizzard woudn't release code written by third parties without a lot more testing than that.

2) There's over a week delay before the time software is submitted to Microsoft and Sony and the time they release it on XBL or PS Store because they do their own internal testing afterwards...

3) How are the mods writter going to test their mod work if they can't run their code on the Xbox360 or PS3 by themselves ? That's kinda the basic of how you write  and test them......... ANd that will never change as this is the basic way the consoles protect themselves from piracy...

4) The reason mods are so successfull is that there are so many of them, Blizzard woudn't have the time to test every one of those out there ( and Sony or MSFT woudn't either, imagine having to retest 500 mods every patch day ).

5) You use mods at your own risk ( they are the reason so many account get hacked too, people downloading unsafe mods from unsafe sites). Consoles do not work this way, they don't release stuff you use at your own risk.

 

 



PS3-Xbox360 gap : 1.5 millions and going up in PS3 favor !

PS3-Wii gap : 20 millions and going down !

twesterm on 17 February 2009
Ail said:
twesterm said:
Untamoi said:
puffy said:
Never having touched an MMO - why would it NEED a keyboard and mouse? Isn't the reason why WoW is so popular because it is really easy to play but hard to master?

I think for an MMO to be popular on a console, a similar mantra is neccessary and making it work with just a controller or even a Wii Remote on it's own would be a step in the right direction.

It'd be much more accessible but that doesn't mean it has to lose depth and I'm sure a tlent like Blizzard could make it work on a console format.

 

MMO's are mostly about communicating with other people so you would need mic or keyboard. Heck, many people play MMO's just to chat. Everything else should be possible with controller.

 

That's one half of it and the other half are macros or hot keys.  You need to be able to do things quickly and that's hard to do without a good setup.

Going back to FFXI, they actually did a really good job at both of these.  I didn't use controllers or gamepads much at all in FFXI but I believe they had it where you pressed a trigger which brought up a bar that you just used the D-Pad left or right to scroll through the 0-9 positions.  It sounds cumbersome but it actually works pretty well and things can be done really quickly.

Timing is incredibly important (even more so than WoW) but you have a few seconds to always set up or anticipate your next move so it works quite well.

For the communication they actually had the incredibly smart auto translator.  I never used this on the gamepad, only on the keyboard but it worked very well too *and* it lets you seamlessly communicate with people in whatever their native language is.

For keyboards, you simply start typing and press tab and it brings up a small list of words (and you usually type enough so it's the only or first word on the list so you just press tab and then enter--also makes for quick typing) and then BOOM everyone can read what you type.

For controllers or gamepads I believe you pressed a button and you had to navigate a series of menus.  Again, sounds cumbersome, but I knew people that exclusively used gamepads or played on consoles and they always communited well.  They had trouble participating onconversations but as far as gameplay they could do perfectly fine.

There are also mics that take care of the communication problem beautifully.  FFXI was made for the PS2 before even the PC so mics were never considered.  Nowadays mics are part of every console so that wouldn't be a problem at all.

--

And puffy, WoW is easy to learn but it's also easy to master.  In fact, that's why it's so popular.   Anyone can pick it up and instantly look like a badass.  I'm sorry to all you WoW people, but there really is barely any skill involved in that game.

-edit-

Just thinking about FFXI again (I use to be super addicted to that game)...

That game was built around community and working with other players at all times.  If you've ever played it, you know what I mean.  There are a very small number of things you can do by yourself in that game, everything else requires working and communicating with other people and often times those other people didn't speak English.

It's amazing at how well of a job SE did at this, especially considering that the game was made for the PS2 first.  It's a shame that such a good game had to be eaten by WoW.  True, the game was a huge time sink (I would spend days hunting NM's) and that was one of its biggest downfalls but damn that game beat the snot out of WoW in everything else.

 

If your definition of badass is beating 5 man or 10 man dungeons, probably, otherwise I strongly disagree...

Do you have a 2400 arena rating ?

Did you kill M'uru or KilJaeden pre patch 3.0 ?

I suggest you enlist in the pro arena league and send us videos of your matches so that we can have a good laugh....

No, I actually got banned for...I don't know why (I tried to log in one day after a month or two of not playing and it said my account had been permantly closed) so I haven't played since.  I tried to contact them but they never contacted me back but they haven't charged me so that's one less thing I have to pay for.

Anyways, no, I don't have all that but the game is still stupid amounts of easy.  I'm sorry if this insults you for some reason, but that's just how the game is made.  It is made so anyone can play it and anyone can be good at it.  I have friends that play constantly and I've watched them play and they're usually chilling out barely playing when they do play and even when they're "concentrating" they're really not concentrating that hard.

They even let me have a go with their 70 character and I picked it up in a few minutes and was killing people with little difficulty.  They told me what buttons to press in what order (which they got off another site) and I did and I killed people.  Tweaking your character to have the perfect build isn't skill, it's just reading off a site and spending time.

I doubt their that good, the game is just that easy.

Again, not an insult, that's just how the game is designed.

 



 

Zkuq on 17 February 2009

I think it's mainly because of the price of Live Gold - who really wants to pay even more? Also, the lack of keyboard and a mouse are rather limiting. Of course voice communication is often easier but sometimes, I guess, it's not. Oh, and putting the keyboard in a good place could be a slight problem too. And the lack of buttons would seriously hurt the gameplay due to the lack of different skills...

I thought there were only few yet major reasons; it appears there are actually quite a few.



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.jayderyu on 17 February 2009

We won't see PC MMORPG like they are. Eventually you will see more Console MMORPG, but they will be a different kind of game. Less expansion, but some. Communications requirements will be down a bit and simplified. Updates if at all will be fewer and farther(not that bad a thing).

I do think you will see far more Console MMO coming though. MMO Shooters being more common.



Squilliam: On Vgcharts its a commonly accepted practice to twist the bounds of plausibility in order to support your argument or agenda so I think its pretty cool that this gives me the precedent to say whatever I damn well please.

docholliday on 17 February 2009

It could work, but it would have to have a control scheme that is gamepad friendly. Thats what helped ffxi compete for so long. It is very controller friendly. Now I always had a usb keyboard plugged in as well so I could talk because using a on screen keyboard is just retarted. And to those saying that if it needs a keyboard it wont work, any person who takes to ANY mmo is gonna want a keyboard trust me. Besides its not like keyboards are overly expensive anyways. I have a wireless keyboard I used for 360/ps2 and it only cost about $40 and that was 4 years ago.