Comment by monster99 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by monster99 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

MMO's were the propaganda to sell you the same RPG's without having to give you ownership, if you can't see that when Guild wars had 8 player multiplayer but jury rigged a login/drm system on their PC RPG, you're clueless.

That is why PC RPG's were rebadged mmo's, so that they could use it as a battering ram to change game culture. It's all about profits for these game companies, they wanted control of the software to put microtransactions in them. Notice after Valve, EA and activision got control of the software, they immediately shoved microtransactions into games.

You don't have to deal with lootboxes or MTX if you own the game outright. MMO's were part of the long term war on software ownership on the PC. To not see that and think they are special because you have very powerful feelings for these games, means you're ignoring the overwhelming evidence that the game industry was successful in changing public opinion regarding game ownership. AKA got you to see software as a service as "OK" and that's all they needed to get their foot in the door to take control of the software, once they got a generation of kids that's ok buying software they don't control - the skies the limit at abusive microtransactions, lootboxes and in game stores.

That also means level editing, free maps and mods need to be scaled back because it interferes with profits.

There is a fundamental difference in scale between MMO and RPG.

MMO's argument for online portions of their service were based around that scale. There are plenty of online only games, loot boxes, microtransactions that can happen outside of MMO/RPG style games, some existed before MMO's even took off.

To ignore the fact that MMO's absolutely do need more hardware and need to be split between client and server shows a clear lack of understanding or knowledge about client-server models, large multiplayer games and development.

Uhh, lets remove the progaganda shall we

MMO = marketing term for computer program instructions

Is there any reason as a gamer for any program to be split between two computers when companies goals are to maximize profit, not produce the best games?

So no I understand perfectly well. The fact that private servers exist for world of warcraft and ultima online demonstrates your comment as a farce.

But the server code has been part of games for ages.

You could argue even a game like Minecraft (which is not totally DRM free) includes the server code, so players (and companies) can setup servers as they please.

The only reason I can see for a game to not include the server-side code is to hold the users hostage.

5-10 years from now, nobody will be able to play these games because the servers will be discontinued. We effectively "rent" them because of this.

>MMO's were the propaganda to sell you the same RPG's without having to give you ownership, if you can't see that when Guild wars had 8 player multiplayer but jury rigged a login/drm system on their PC RPG, you're clueless.

I downed your post because resorting to personal insults is against HN's guidelines.

To your point, there exists MMOs that are validly massively multiplayer, online games. There are also many games that didn't need to be architected as an MMO and, from a cynical viewpoint, that could be seen as a land-grab taking control away from the consumer.

You have glossed over a lot of other facts in your pursuit of black-and-white here. For example, Quake 3 and UT2004 had CD Keys. Likewise in regards to Steam, it's not that there are zero benefits to that delivery mechanism over how things were beforehand. Automated install and patching is a far cry from the messing each person had to do previously.

It's certainly debatable whether these things are a net positive or negative, and IMO it's becoming increasingly a negative as time moves on.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com