Its funny how the fan b0yz come out and slam posters the moment some one asks some valid and decent questions about the game in a concerned/inquireing/negative way.
i think ill back this guy up.
this will make it much better that commercial MMO\'s that make a game, host a server, and let it live untill they stop making much money of it
the good thing about PS unlike a commercial game is that we have a permanent Dev team... the game will be perpetually evolving... in other words if PS was to go downhill the devs, with guidance from the players, could bring it back up again
You actualy played a commercial mmorpg?... All have inhouse dedicated dev teams, Devs do more than just make it, set it up and stand back. people in here tout how it will have ever expanding, constant changes and fix\'s due to the non paided dedicated Devs running it. Well ummm ever heard of patchs?... and expansion packs?, granted you have to buy those (not patchs), but dedicated devs and evolveing content is not a PS exclusive, and considering the Paid devs for comercail companys have a real financial insentive to continue to work on a product rather than just the love for it (often most paid devs have more love for there projects than financial interest, wouldnt you after years of working on it?, but an actual income is a big bonus, this is the real world after all, love will not feed ya family).
If a MMorpg of this type was to go downhill and falter, most likely it would be either to the lose of interest by the devs or due to money problems (server/bandwidth rental), and no fan or player guidance would revive it, unless they had the $$$ or the knowhow to take the wheel. Not to mention while the engine is opensource, the content is not... youd have to negotiate getting the rights to it all, Granted being a non profit team it would probably be not that hard to do so, although niggles might arise.
besides, the fact that PS is opensource means it will continue to evolve and improve over years, so if everything goes right, you should still be able to play PS in 10 years without getting bored or feel like you\'re playing an old game o_O
Now many seem to get something wrong here, while PS is opensource they forget this player base made content and outside developed content will very likely NOT appear in the \"offical\" PS world, unless you had it to the dev teams quality and likeing, and where willing to waver your rights to it once its in the game. What it means is some one can download the server/client apps and host there own PS world, useing there added content theyve developed since the code for the whole project is opensource and avaliable to the public. Result is fragmentation of the community and watering down. The PS dev team is unlikely to take every scriptchange or monster model people send in just because its \"opensource\" and people think this means its a community project. Im sure that if your contributions where that good theyd try to recruit you into the dev team.
Im possibly soon (its almost a yes from the publisher according to my boss) going to actualy do 3d work and textureing for a commercial game project along with the rest of my mod team for a rather well known games publisher. Now i had love for the medium before hand, but to me 10 years of doing content work with out any form of pay in my spare time is frightening, and a rather stupid situation. I had motivation and get go before, but with the prospect of makeing an actual liveing from this, my motivation is alot more higher. Basicly im saying that a free project like this which is takeing an eon to complete, with a strictly unpaid volunteer dev team doing this work in there spare time around there day jobs, the life span after completeion (if it gets completed) of PS will not be 10 years (then again its been in the makeing that long so far
). I could be wrong and there have been examples of success stories, but there exceptions to the rule.
but the fact that since you don\'t have to pay, you can enjoy the game more and take your time, because you can play it forever, or even drop it for some time and come back to it later.
To me Paytoplay means a certain level of quality and commitment by the developers, you give them the money and they are therefore bound to give you a good experiance after all you pay there wages. And as far as I know from experiance you can drop paying mmorpgs and take a break and return later, heck ive done it enough in EQ myself. once you pay your months fee your not eternaly bound to there bank book and game for life.
Now here is my question to you, why *don\'t* you think this game will be different from other MMORPG\'s? in fact, what 2 MMORPG\'s are really the same?
Actualy besides one or two games with interesting side systems (Horizons city rebuilding, dragon flight, DaoC\'s Realm Wars, EQ\'s AA and tribute/augment systems etc) ALL morpgs are the same, and besides the setting, ive seen little to say PS will be any differant in these respects, even WoW will be your typical MMorpg, albeit a very high quality one (im mostly interested in it due to its Visual Quality and style). MMorpgs work because they follow a core set of gameplay, the same as every other genre of entertainment. the onyl way to make a differant game is to break the mold entirely and create a MMorpg so differant from the competition its unrecognisable. The problem with that is it then no longer IS an mmorpg and cant be classed as one. The Mmorpg is now a real genre of gameing and its bounds set. Many games from all genres have tried to break from there bounds, and some have done so, or so they think, but when you get to the nitty gritty they are still there parents child no matter how hard they try not to be. All MMorpgs are the same... sad but unavoidable.
