Player Forgets to Pay Station Rent, Space Armageddon Ensues

Oh, EVE Online!

Your 'spreadsheets in space' gameplay puts me in a coma even as the spectacular antics of your community make you by far my favorite MMO to read about:

What touched off this battle? A missed bill payment, basically.
"Earlier today an alliance in the N3 coalition missed a bill payment for the system where Pandemic Legion is staging and storing their fleets," writes EVE. "This missed bill caused sovereignty to drop across the system leaving the station vulnerable to capture. Seizing the opportunity, the CFC (Goonswarm Federation, Razor Alliance, Black Legion and the Initiative) and Russian Coalition (Solar Fleet, Darkness of Despair and Against ALL Authorities) captured the station."

Sheesh, and I got pissed when someone forgot to pay base rent and our zone teleporters went offline!

I'm trying to imagine the foaming lunacy of the base building community if things like this had been possible in CoH....and failing.  =P

SOE Prez Bats Eyelashes At, Shows Leg to SWG Exiles

As I mentioned in this post John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment, took part in a Reddit AMA following the announced closure of four MMOs. I skimmed it and this stood out:

[–]Cranks0 If you could relaunch a shutdown title which one would you pick and what would you do differently this time? permalink [–]j_smedley[S] SWG. I would do everything differently. SWG PLAYERS - OUR NEXT GAME (not announced yet) IS DEDICATED TO YOU. Once we launch it... you can come home now.

So, this guy representing the company that first HUGELY screwed up the game and eventually shut it down due largely to that screwing up wants do-overs?

 Huh.

It would be hard to overstate the popularity of the Star Wars IP.
Owning those MMO rights is a liscence to print money, and I'm sure whatever they release will do massive launch numbers. As a game it's in another, uh, galaxy from CoH, an original property with no preexisting audience aside from a presumed affinity with generic "comic book fans". But SWG exiles and CoH exiles are on the same diaspora, along with every other orphaned community from a cancelled game. Many respondents in that thread expressed their excitement and joy at a potential homecoming, and I don't blame them.

 As contemptuous as I am of NC, if they hinted in a similar fashion at a CoH sequel I wouldn't be able to contain my excitement- that sort of irrational loyalty is a fundamental strand of the geek genome, which explains my nostalgic affection for AD&D even though I haven't played since the Player's Handbook looked like this-
 

 I hate NC as virulently as you can hate any faceless corporate entity, I wish them ill and will laugh when they go under.

 But....just like those anonymous SWG players, I'd come running back if they re-opened CoH or turned out a viable sequel, even knowing that things would, sooner or later, end up in the same place, with opaque corporate logic dictating the destruction of my world.

 Again.

 Knowing I'm prone to these uncontrollable responses when it comes to games I love is the main reason I've sworn off corporate backed MMOs. Relationships with games are like relationships with people- it does no good to go on a date thinking you've got it all figured out and that it's just a casual thing so whatever. I mean, that's how I met my wife and it's been nearly 20 years since that first casual date. While you can safely have a one night stand (so to speak) with a single player game, which are essentially finished products by the time you play them, MMOs are constantly evolving, deepening and expanding, and that's what makes them seductive and potentially dangerous.

 The game we were playing at the end of CoH had very little in common with the game at launch other than surface cosmetics. A corporate MMO is like that archetypal Bad Girl who you know is no good, who just wants you for your money, but who only has to snap her fingers to make you come running.

 And the only viable defense against that sort of attachment is complete abstinence.

Happy Goaterday!

I was working on a 'real' post, but then I found this lying around the internet. SCORE!

SOE Orphans 4 More MMO Communities (And Still Looks Better Than NC Soft)

More bad news for citizens of the MMO-verse:

Sony Online Entertainment has announced that it will shut down four MMOs before the end of the year. Free Realms and Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures will end by March 31, while Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and Wizardry Online will end by July 31.

I know little about these games and have no idea if they were losing money or, like CoH, were profitable just not profitable *enough*.  Regardless, I empathize with their communities.  I figure any game that's been around a while will have built up a core community that feels just as strongly about it as we felt about CoH, and I wouldn't wish the pain of a closure on anyone.

That said, SOE is distancing themselves from the brutal, clumsy way NC Soft handled the CoH 'sunset', providing additional content for each game before destroying their worlds (click the first link for details) and exposing their president to direct feedback from the affected communities:

SOE President John Smedley is also conducting an AMA on Reddit that began at 3:00 p.m. Pacific today, and he'll answer questions until 5:00 p.m. Pacific.

Absent a virtual Bill of Rights protecting the interests of MMO gamers, I'm finished with big corporate worlds.  Once is too many times to suffer the tragedy of playing and becoming attached to a game, helping build its community, then having that world eliminated by faceless cube dwelling bean counters.

I will never again tolerate the traditional structure of Corporation > Developer > Player, with the player as essentially powerless livestock to be milked for profit until the point where they are deemed inefficient and sold off to the glue factory.

Paragon did a fantastic job of listening to us and, as much as possible, tailoring their game design to our wishes.  But that close relationship meant nothing when the NC paymasters decided to blow it all to hell.

I'm hopeful that eliminating the Big Corporation via the new paradigm of Crowd Sourced Funding > Developers > Players will give us 'little guys' at the bottom of the MMO food chain more input and security.