GameForge Rockin the MMO Industry

I’ve always been a fan of fighting games. I remember playing Tekken
games in the arcades back in the day and more recently I remember
playing rounds of Soul Caliber 2 on my gamecube with buddies hours on
end. Luckily for me there are a boat load of free to play fighting MMOs
out there. One of the oldest ones being Rumble Fighter. Another being Splash Fighters. One of my favorite fighting MMOs though is Lost Saga
from OG Planet because of its incredible variety. The game has a lot of
characters to choose from. They also each level up in a persistent
world, so you can actually advance the characters you want to play and
switch them around if ever get bored.

Aside from Lost Saga though, there are a bunch of other fun fighting games. OG Planet recently released Zone 4: Fight District
– which is a fun cage wrestling / fighting style fighting game. It’s
much different than Lost Saga, but I think Lost Saga is a bit more fun.
When I get bored of playing traditional MMORPGs like 4Story, Runes of Magic and Grand Chase – I like to mix things up and play some random MMOs. I actually play a lot of MMOs from sports MMOs like MLB Dugout Heroes and FIFA Online to MMOFPS games like CosmicBreak and Battlefield heroes.

But enough about that! This is supposed to be about fighting MMOs! GetAmped 2 is a neat little fighting MMO by CyberStep.
Unfortunately the game shut down for nearly 6 months in early 2010,
but the game is back into open beta finally. It’s cartoony and plays a
bit like Splash Fighters, except with much more variety. Between Splash
Fighters and Getamped 2 there’s no argument. GetAmped2 is much more
fun. Some MMORPGs – mostly action brawler MMORPGs like Dungeon Fighter Online, Vindictus and Soul Master actually feel like fighting games, as the gameplay is action packed.

If you’re looking for a fun fighting MMO to check out – I would
probably recommend Lost Saga over anything else. Fighting MMOs are
always a good fun distraction when you’re bored of playing traditional
MMORPGs or browser games. Personally, I like browser games like War of Legends, Grepolis and Deepolis – but I like to mix things up and play a bit of everything.

GameForge Rockin the MMO Industry

Yesterday the German MMORPG publisher GameForge
announced that they agreed to purchase 60% of Frogster Interactive in a
deal that valued the company at around $80 million. That’s a lot of
money. I’m not even sure if Frogster Interactive is profitable. It’s
sort of hard to tell though because both GameForge and Frogster are
private companies – meaning they don’t release their financial
statements to the public.

Source: GameForge Buys Frogster

What I found interesting about this deal is that Frogster at the moment is a one trick pony. They have ONE game on the market – Runes of Magic,
which is extremely popular. If the game fades away in the next 2 years
GameForge will have gotten burnt on the deal. GameForge itself is a
pretty large company and they can afford the risk. They’re big on browser games like Ogame, Ikariam and Gladiatus. They also publish a bunch of 3D MMORPGs like 4Story, Gates of Andaron, Metin 2 and Ace Online.

I’ve actually been playing Runes of Magic for the last few months
and I absolutely love the game. I just hope with GameForge at the helm,
Runes of Magic doesn’t go south. From what I’ve heard GameForge’s
MMORPG Gates of Andaron is “pay to win”. I’d hate to see Runes of Magic
become pay to win, as it would ruin the game for me. The most likely
scenario will be that the two companies merge and Frogster ends up
doing its own thing while GameForge ends up doing its own thing.
Frogster will run independently as a subsidiary of GameForge.

Last I remember Frogster was supposed to be relaunching The Chronicles of Spellborn
as a free to play game, but I think that project got axed recently.
Sucks to see a game like TCOB disappear, but at least people will be
able to enjoy it for a few more months on the Acclaim
Games portal. I’m pretty sure Playdom, who bought acclaim games
recently, will be shutting down many more games on the Acclaim portal. 2Moons, 9Dragons and Dance Online will likely all shut down in the coming months. Playdom already shut down RockFree – which was one of the most popular MMORPGs on the portal.

So what’s next for GameForge? Who knows. Maybe they’ll acquire another big MMO in the future.

MMORPG Developers Shouldn’t Worry About Balance

Should classes in MMORPGs
like Fighter, Mage, Thief and Archer be balanced? Well, balance is
important, but know what’s more important? Having LOTS of somewhat
balanced classes. Example. I prefer games like EverQuest II and Vanguard from Sony Online Entertainment which each have over 15 playable classes to more “balanced” MMORPGs like Florensia from Alaplaya and Fiesta Online from Outspark
which have 4-5 classes. Sure balance is good, but again, I’d rather
play a game that gives me more choice. This is ESPECIALLY true for PvE
MMORPGs like MapleStory and Cloud Nine
which have very limited PvP options. When a game isn’t too PvP
intensive, why should you or I even care if say a Warrior is over
powered a Mage is a bit weaker? It’s not like it’s a competition or
anything. I can see a need for balance in highly competitive PvP MMORPGs like Aika Online, Metin 2 and 4Story.

I’m not saying that MMORPG developers should TOTALLY ignore MMO class balances,
as that would be stupid. I’m suggesting that game designers try to
make the classes as balanced as possible, but instead of trying to
achieve “perfect balance” through time consuming and expensive testing,
they should simply let the dice fall where they may – even if one or
two classes are a bit more powerful than others. If any class is TOO
weak, they can get buffed in future patches. The point is to make all
the classes “somewhat” balanced, while focusing on introducing new
classes to the game regularly. The only two games that takes this
approach, I feel, is League of Legends and Avalon Heroes
– two aion of strife MMOs which each have 30+ playable characters.
Sure, they aren’t all balanced, but who cares? Both games are fun, and
their respective game designers are tweaking the classes as they go
while also introducing new ones regularly. I think League of Legends is
actually up to 40+ heroes now.

What I want from a game is constant variety, which is why one MMORPG just isn’t enough for me. After I play through all of the archetypes in a game, I move on to the next. Perfect World only has like 8 classes, so after trying each class and leveling them all up to 20 or so, I went ahead and downloaded Battle of the Immortals and played that for a while. Then I moved on to Heroes of Three Kingdoms.
MapleStory kept me occupied for over a year because it has 15+ classes
and many different job advancements. By the time I got done with fully
trying out one character, Nexon would release another one! Which is why I love Nexon games. They’re on the ball with updates. I only played Valkyrie Sky for a short period of time, as it only has a handful of classes, though I loved it. It’s an original MMO.

Anyway. Anyone here agreew with me on the whole “wanting more classes” thing? Or is that just me?