Waiting For Quality: A Better Future For MMORPGs?
DateTime:7/8/2009 5:21:12 PM

For those of us who still love our offline games, it's interesting to see the differences in production that surround our 'regular video games' and our MMORPGs. Perhaps the biggest burden that is placed upon offline games is their aim for key release dates that coincide with consumer purchases.With the console industry, blockbuster releases need to compete only with other games coming out at the same time - Street Fighter 4 doesn't need to worry too much about pre-existing fighting titles because gamers will happily make the purchase, even if they already have Soul Calibur 5, Tekken 5, Guilty Gear XX2 and Street Fighter 3 (guilty!).

In other words, Age of Conan went live when Blizzard said "that's it!" for the summer and decided to focus on the winter release of their next expansion. Warhammer Online even 'chopped' out four capital cities and four classes in order to make their Fall release (yes, the pun was totally necessary for those who got it).Coincidentally (but probably not!), May 20th marked the very last TBC expansion for World of Warcraft (that was the day that the third gate opened for Sunwell Plateau, granting access to the full instance), and it would also be the beginning of the WoW Summer lull of 2008 which merely saw the beginning of Season 4 Arena and a broad sweeping nerf to all raid content, in order to allow everyone the opportunity to experience endgame WoW before Wrath of the Lich King hit.