f13.net

How many ways can you spell Jack Sparrow? We will find out definitive answer very soon.

 Disney to launch more massively multiplayer games  (http://today.reuters.com/news/articleinvesting.aspx?type=companyNews&storyid=47682+09-Jan-2007+RTRS)

I highly doubt anything but art will be developed in-house. So what studio gets to develop it or do you think they will go with out-of-the-box solution?

Does Disney not have its own developers, I thought Disney made ToonTown Online themselves and shipped it to smedley for cookies?

Disney did Toontown Online in-house so I don't see why they wouldn't do Pirates in-house as well.

The Pirates of the Caribbean MMO was announced about a year ago, so I'm not sure what the point of this topic is beyond "Disney has vague plans to do more MMO's".

Might has something to do with the last film of the trilogy coming out this year, perhaps a marketing ploy for product hype for both the game and film?

I think it's more likely that the Reuters guy thought "Wow scoop!" and ran to post without any checking for important details, LIKE DISNEY HAVING DONE MMO'S FOR LIKE FIVE YEARS.

Whoops... so much for 'professional journalists'

Are you implying Sinij is not a professional journalist? The plot thickens.

Oh yeah, this guy has done his research.

That sounds like something you'd hear around 2000 in a brief blurb about teenagers being driven mad and chasing goblins in the streets.

TELL ME MORE OF THIS "ULTIMA" IS IT ON THE AOL ALSO? OR IS IT WEB EXCLUSIVE? GROUNDBREAKING!

Never end?  Hee hee hee!

I thought he was a professional wrestler..  :|

SOE Dev!!!!1111oneoneKOS

Where my pitchfork  :-D

/derail

Grimwell's SOE devhood has a whole thread of its own for you to troll merrily.  In any case focus your rage properly: taking the SOE shilling is minor next to a PR blunder like vouching for Morgan.

He can't know that much about the Internet. He left out the thing about the tubes.

:rimshot:

Even I knew that they developed ToonTown, but unlike Ralph I have very narrow definition of what mmorpg is. In my book mmorpg has to have persistent world, player interaction and advancement - if any of thi is missing it isn't a mmorpg. For example puzzle pirates is not a mmorpg, toontown could be if you ignore intentionally limited interaction.

What I find interesting, aside for poorly written article, is that Disney wants to get into *real* mmorpg, as in catass, raids and moneyhats mmorpg, and I'm not sure they have expertise. At best they will end up with Another WoW Clone™ at worst they will discover that doing /giggle and /hug is not such a good core gameplay.

I'm also curious about subscription costs, does ToonTown charges any? How would you go about getting subscription out of such young audience?

Captain Crotchpheasant, if ye plz

I'm a toothless hobo guy that asks you for a quarter every time you get off public transit on your way to work. You gave me one yesterday but today you just shrug it off. Bastard, now I'm quarter short for my lessons.

(http://media.urbandictionary.com/image/large/hobo-28753.jpg)

I played Toontown Online.

I remember shooting the bad cog people with horns and stuff.

It just grabs the random people on the street standing next to you and puts you in a fight with them.

Damn "Ralph" and his liberal hippy definintions of stuff!  Actually, I call everything, including my online banking, an MMO.  I prefer the PvP on the f13 MMO, though.  I actually chatted to Xanthippe about this MMO a while back, since she subs to Toontown for her kids.  If I were to find a beta slot for this, I've already promised it to her.  I expect it to be ADORABLE, although it doesn't seem to be geared towards the wee ones.  Maybe it's the Touchstone side of Disney.

Edited to adjust Xanthippe's gender.   :oops:

I hope it has rape, murder, and open PvP.

And ponies and unicorns.

They should market toontown to pedophiles.

I need my morning coffee or there will be blood before noon.

That would be a marketing campaign to remember.

Toontown - It's like a river made out of milk, but instead of fish there are young boys in swim trunks.

...

Ew.

Puzzle Pirates has more persistence, interaction, and advancement than Toontown. Unless you're using your own definition of those things, as well...?

Maybe I don't know enough about PP - give me one example of persistence, interaction, and advancement that doesn't revolve around solving a puzzle.

I'm on board with Signe's idea that RL is a MOG.  Driving on a busy highway, standing in line at McDonald's, have to belong to an uberguild/corporation to get the phat lewt, devs/congressmen that don't give a shit about popular opinion; there are parallels everywhere.

What does solving a puzzle have to do with those things not being an MMOG? I think you've borked my mind.

It's a PVP MMOG with skill-based gameplay. One would think that'd be right up your fudgey alley.

I'm not trying to knock puzzle pirates or toontown, there are people who like and play these games. Still they are MOGs, not MMORPGS.

For example CS is not a mmorpg, even if you set up your server to *never* reset money, switch map and you always play with the same people and get to know them. Diablo2 is also not a mmorpg, even if you add graphical lobby to matchmaking area.  Its not enough to have one aspect, like character advancement, you need to have a minimum set of them.

You make me a sad panda. The things you appear to be advocating as necessities for a game being an MMOG are exactly why most PVP in MMOG's is a soul-crushing shitpile.

Fixed it for you. 

In fact, I still support Toontown (2 accounts even) despite rarely playing and still not having a maxed out toon.

Toontown is definitely a MMORPG by Sinj's definition. 

Persistant world - check
Player interaction - check
Advancement - check

Also, now, there are "raid instances" if you will, and also "crafting."

Raid instances:  Cog Headquarters require groups of toons to defeat.

Crafting:  Aside from fishing, toons may also grow gags at their estates.  Gardening and watering are crafts.

Minigames:  In addition to the jelly bean trolly games, there is Goofy's Speedway, where you race other toons in order to earn points to pimp your ride so you can win more races.

They've also raised the "level cap" on gags and added a new level to each.

Toontown continues to impress me as a grade A mmog.  They get way more right than wrong.  Some of the big guys could learn from them.

Lets not take what I say out of context. For example I did not say that character advancement should be long, level-based or main yardstick of your abilities. It doesn't even need to have positive effect on your character. Still there should be a way for your avatar to change with time and be different from other players. Similar argument applies to other aspects.

Ether way - my original point was that Disney might have great artists, writers and even coders but they lack experience designing MMORPGs since they haven't done one yet.


This is where I disagree and why I was hesitant to call TT a mmorpg. For obvious reasons TT has all interactions limited to a small subset of allowed activities. For example you can't have a conversation with other player and you can't decide to work together or avoid each other - so all other players conceptually boil down to 'an object' that you can interact with in limited way. Again, I do not subscribe to TT and my experience with it limited to brief tour of early beta.

I'm really not getting what an MMORPG is according to Sinj then.  More precision on the terms, please.

How about we start from other end, you tell me what MMORPG to you and why TT/PP are MMORPGs.

I already did, see above.  What is missing?

"Persistant World"

The "world" part is critical for me to consider it a MMORPG.


Has (had)(is) a world:  AC1, AC2, SWG, Horizons, AO, DAOC, EQ, EVE (from what I gather), Planetside

Barely a world (just makes it): CoH, CoV

No world:  Diablo, Diablo2, DDO, Guild Wars

If the 'world' is just a series of smallish instance dungeons, linked by instanced 'towns', and areas are totally blocked from access unless you pass some quest - that is 'not a world'.   Which is why DDO, and GW are on my 'no world' list, besides the obvious Diablo.

CoH/CoV is borderline, because every square zone in the city is instanced, but they are large enough, and you can travel between them freely enought that it 'passed' my definition.

So what is Toontown and Puzzle Pirates?

You can have interactions with other players in Toontown.  Limited chat via the chat interface, or secret friend chat which is unlimited chatting - but you need to get secret friends outside of the game via message boards or email or some other form of contact other than in-game contact.  It does exist, though.

Toons can decide whether to group up or not.  Buildings and Cog Headquarters are group activities.  Streets are not necessarily group activities, but players can and do work together.

As far as the "world" aspect goes - Toons are instanced in buildings, estates, trolley games and Cog Headquarters.  Most of the world - the streets and playgrounds - are not instanced.  You will see - and can play with - other toons in these places.  All toons can access these places (safely, if they stay on the sidewalks).

Persistence: Players can build ships, shops, and governments that persist in the world when they are not there.

Interaction: You can talk to other people (duh), form "guilds" (crews), play various games of skill and chance (card games, not puzzles) for money, and trade (there's a commodities market in addition to the piddling item trade and shop sort of thing that every other MMOG has).  Not to mention all of the forms of combat (some of which include a chance of heavy item loss and/or permanent changes to the loser's avatar), but those involve puzzles so they might not count to you.

Advancement: Economic advancement is the most obvious -- see above stuff about building stuff and establishing governments.  There's also equipment (one of the first priorities for most beginning players is earning money to buy themselves better weapons).  And a bunch of less tangible stuff like social and political advancement (making a name for yourself, being part of a crew you like, etc), as well as skill-based advancement (which again doesn't count to you since it involves puzzles).

Sorry, I gave you more than one example of each.   :-P

Puzzle Pirates has a persistent world shared by users, persistent characters, a full-blown economy, crafting, housing, guilds, towns... basically, it's an MMORPG where the minigame of combat got replaced with a minigame of Puzzle Fighter. It totally meets the definition. It's not a session-based game at all.

Toontown has a persistent world with instanced multiplayer "dungeons" that are minigame challenges for earning money, and shared zones for combat, plus the town proper. Persistent world, check, persistent characters, check...

No game without a soul-crushing grind will ever be accepted by everyone as a MMOG.   :-P

The more I witness the transpirings of what takes place in a persistent state massively multiplayer world with no instancing but including, "persistent characters, a full-blown economy, crafting, housing, guilds, towns"...

... the more I'm convinced it's a bad idea.

Are you kidding? That's the entire draw of the virtual world-as-a-sandbox. People esacpe from reality and build a pseudo-life where they can achieve things they can't / won't do in real life. It's a powerful draw and those that can harness it get money hats. The only problem is that at their heart, people are horny, selfish, stupid, and don't play nice with each other.

Raph - I'd argue it doesn't have instanced dungeons. It has locking dungeons, but two groups can't be in the same building at the same time saving the same street. Once you go into a building, no one else can.

I still like Toontown, even if my wireless setup drives it crazy.  I've got the linsky wireless and the wireless-g Game Adapter, which is great for everything from BF2, BF 2142, CoX, WoW, Titan Quest online-games, Diablo 2 online, surfing the internet and pirating songs and porn...but Toontown goes nuts and keeps disconnecting me.  I'm thinking of switching back to a wired system anyway, since I now have a big 42" LCD HDTV that I could hook my computer up to it, and go back to the wired router.