Piracy, Magic, and War: Free MMOs

More spam?

Gamespot recently (well, June) also wrote an article on free-to-play MMOs, giving some examples. You can find the article here.

I was actually surprised that it listed golden oldies like Shattered Galaxy. I still launch it once in a while, if you can live with the graphics, it's pretty fun to play!



Not really, since it's posted in Off-Topic > PC Gaming. Perfectly appropriate place for a thread detailing free games to play.

This even sounds like an advertisement...

Well, sort of.. I mean it is giving links to free games to play. I didn't think of it as spam though.

*shrugs* To each their own I guess

advertisement that works while waiting for the demigod beta cabal looks like a good time waster since im sick of WoW private servers and the bugginess why havnt i heard of it before

Strikersgun, kindly vacate the premises of my head

I thought the same thing Cabal doesn't look bad actually, I'll probably give it a shot this weekend.

Actually this guy posted three posts in short order that are either selling something or promoting a "free" external site.

There's the Anti-Malware Toolkit where he's clearly trying to sell something.

Then there's Batman Game Details Revealed where he's promoting some soon to be released game by a company I've never heard of and then this post.

All of these were posted within a span of 4 minutes and he's never previously posted anything else.

The first post I encountered was the Anti-Malware Toolkit which seemed to me to be a blatent sales pitch. I could see how the other two posts could seem to be a little more innocuous taken in isolation but to me the three all togethter spell a spammer and I recommend that his account be deleted.

Yeah, I just noticed the other posts actually. I guess under those conditions it can be counted as spam, but then again it's not really malicious either.

I looked at the Gamespot article Annatar linked to.

...I'm going to have to have a look at this Air Rivals thing.

Perhaps not. In any case all I'm really pointing out is my opinion. Generally there's a set of forum rules that usually prohibit selling things or even promoting other sites but I can't seem to find any such thing here.

It's just that I've seen things like this in the past and in general Kryo came along and deleted them in fairly short order. Admittedly in those cases it was far more apparent that it was a bot spamming stuff indiscriminately and these posts seem better thought out and more appropriately placed so it seems that an actual human is probably responsible.

Anyway if Kryo thinks they're spam then I'm sure he'll delete them and if he doesn't, he won't.

What veteran gamers of CS are you talking about? When went to source a large majority of veteran gamers quit because it was an awful step in the wrong direction...

Um what I don't get is why he groups online shooters and MMORPG's in the same box. It's expected (generally from my experience) that an online shooter is for free, MMORPG's well I generally don't care for them. Had some fun playing wow until my trial ran out and then there was no way I was paying for it (no offense to those who like the game it just isn't for me).

Are chineese people farming the internet for information and then trying to sell us it on froums? Why didn't this thread start with the title "Cheap mmos! BUY BUY! You discount yes! go to www ChinaOwnsTheInternet com!"

As sales pitches go, its well written and non-offensive.

Well... yeah.

And Combat Arms ain't half bad.

Also the first game in the OP is Voyage Century not bounty Bay. (Though I think they might be the exact same thing)

Also Air Rivals is fun but its a grind fest.

I'm aware of some other methods of payment for MMORPGs:

Guild Wars takes the classic approach used for most online games - it costs money to buy, but is totally free to play. This means there isn't a steady flow of money like other MMORPGs, but if they follow an episodic approach and release expansions on a regular basis, they can still get a regular flow of money.

Silkroad and some other lesser known MMORPGs take an unusual approach by offering premium items that can be bought using real world currency inside the game through an online store. It's a risky approach, and players that don't have the money to buy premium items may feel disadvantaged, but apparently it works: Players in Silkroad will often spend more money on premium items than WoW players pay on a monthly basis!

By the way - don't waste your time trying Silkroad - there's vastly more bots than humans in there, and it's got a really steep grinding curve.

Runescape offers an all or nothing premium membership: Members that pay get to access extra game content through a WoW-like subscription. Unlike WoW, Runescape also offers free play, albeit on servers that have ads.

Personally, however, I'd really like to see more Sci-Fi MMORPGs. I'm a really big Sci-Fi fan, but I haven't seen any really good ones.

Anarchy Online showed promise, but it seems to take forever to do anything in it, and only one of my friends played it. It's also a pretty dwindling community by now, from what I hear.

EVE sounds like it's too free form, with very few quests and no restrictions on PKing. Sorry, but I like quests and prefer to PvE rather than PvP.

For the most part, you really just end up playing what your friends play, because part of nearly all MMORPGs is the community. These days I just pay the subscription fee and play WoW.

Yeah, it costs money - but that's where most of my friends went. And frankly, despite the old graphics, it's very polished gameplay. It's got most of the features from the other MMORPGs, and it's the only game I know of that has a centralized marketplace (auction house in the case of WoW), which frankly is something most MMORPGs could benefit from but rarely implement.

The community is really WoW's strength: It's easy to find other people in real life that play WoW. It's easy to play with friends. It's easy to talk to other people about it. Everybody has it, or at least knows what it is.

It's not so easy to find friends that play some other game like Cabal. While I'm sure it's got a decent online community, it doesn't really extend that much into real life, because it's new and doesn't have the same large player base that WoW does.

. . . and despite Cabal being labeled as a "WoW killer" by some people I've talked to, it really can't be a WoW killer until it builds up a community that is on the same scale as WoW - and that's very difficult. You need more than just a great game for that: You need a big marketing campaign and incentives for people to switch. If they can't build up a decent player base, they risk becoming yet another niche MMORPG, played only by a few loyalists.

You guys are too funny.... Everything is not a conspiracy 

I actually merged this from a couple of articles I wrote, and admit I should have changed the title to be a little more versatile

I do have a site of my own, which I am not promoting.

Anyways, I am not affiliated with any of the programs listed.

 

blitxxx...  this is not exactly the first topic you'd want to be creating on a forum considering you've never even posted here until now because it raises a shadow of doubt over your intentions, thus many start feeling this is spam/advertisement.   I wouldn't be surprised if the thread gets locked.