When do you think SE will start talking about a new MMO?

[Intense]

If it's as addicting as FFXI is they can go fuck themselves.

Correct answer. This game sucked up 3 years of my life and I quit cold turkey thankfully. Give me a game that isn't so damn time intensive. I can't compete with jobless losers for a piece of gear.

QFT

[BRP]

The correct answer to the topic question is: They already have.

They've been talking about an MMO for quite some time now, but usually only when asked in an interview.

They just refuse to give any details, yet.

I meant talking details. When the 'advertisement' begins.


And can we stop the FFXI baww please?

[Charla]

...as it stands, not much profit to be made from Vista users with its current majority userbase consisting of people with laptops with only decent integrated graphics chips.

I don't understand this sentence. Do you mean that the only significant group using Vista is people using laptops, which naturally have decent integrated graphics chips? Do you mean that the only significant group using Vista who also have decent graphics chips are on laptops? Or maybe the only significant group using Vista also have integrated graphics chips, either on laptops or desktops. (I have a relatively new desktop with Vista and a mediocre integrated GPU as it happens).

[Amele]

the hobbyist market hasn't adopted vista yet and isn't about to.

the desktop market is still shipping XP on most high end gaming machines, because the game market (outside of microsoft) is still using XP and will continue to be majority XP until probably the end of next year (or at least, dual release XP/Vista for that long)

so most machines shipping vista are laptops and low-end desktops, which aren't targeting a gaming market; this is also the group of machines most likely to have integrated graphics.

[Charla]

I see now. I'm not so sure that's a real obstacle though. Making an MMO that runs fairly well on a new but mediocre GPU is in my view a better idea than making one with ZOMG hawt gfx (like Vanguard). Running smoothly with 200 character models on my screen is far more important than being able to watch my own character model scratch its ultra high-polycount ass. Besides which, I've run with all graphics settings on minimum in every MMO i've played so far and it still made my GPU at the time cough and wheeze on 3 of them (9Dragons doesn't really count because I never saw anything resembling an endgame). On top of that, WoW looks prettier to me than Vanguard and has much lower system specs (having never played WoW and barely played Vanguard).

Look at it this way: the one thing you never hear people complain about in FFXI even years after release is the visual quality, and the graphical requirements were pretty moderate even at (NA) release. Surely SE can figure out what they did right, can't they?

[Amele]

I see now. I'm not so sure that's a real obstacle though. Making an MMO that runs fairly well on a new but mediocre GPU is in my view a better idea than making one with ZOMG hawt gfx (like Vanguard). Running smoothly with 200 character models on my screen is far more important than being able to watch my own character model scratch its ultra high-polycount ass. Besides which, I've run with all graphics settings on minimum in every MMO i've played so far and it still made my GPU at the time cough and wheeze on 3 of them (9Dragons doesn't really count because I never saw anything resembling an endgame). On top of that, WoW looks prettier to me than Vanguard and has much lower system specs (having never played WoW and barely played Vanguard).

Look at it this way: the one thing you never hear people complain about in FFXI even years after release is the visual quality, and the graphical requirements were pretty moderate even at (NA) release. Surely SE can figure out what they did right, can't they?

NA PC release the requirements were pretty high end. at the time of release (2003) they were asking for cards released within the last year (radeon 9000/geforce 4) and at the time the 800MHz requirement meant you had to have at least a high end PIII if not a PIV (so within the last two years basically)

if you want 200* 3d models you'll need just as many poly's (if not more) as you would for 30 hi-poly 3d models, unless you like your 3d models to be basic cubes.

"quality" graphics have more to do with textures and color palette and lighting/shading choices than they have to do with polycount. *this* is what SE got right (that alot of other competitive MMO's got wrong). and even then, SE's textures could be a ton better.

edit: hit 0 one to many times.

[Septimus]

I see now. I'm not so sure that's a real obstacle though. Making an MMO that runs fairly well on a new but mediocre GPU is in my view a better idea than making one with ZOMG hawt gfx (like Vanguard). Running smoothly with 200 character models on my screen is far more important than being able to watch my own character model scratch its ultra high-polycount ass.

Speak for yourself. I want graphics so hot that I can tell what religion a Galka is when he walks up next to me wearing a subligar.

All kidding aside and onto the main point of the thread, FFXI is still making a lot of money for the company. Square had a revenue of $598,300,000 from FY 2003 to 2004 (latest stats I could get), with 500,000 active players having on average 3 mules each, FFXI earns around $95,700,000 a year. (I know, not including development costs, server costs, salairies, minimal advertisements, etc- but also not including the revenue from actual sales of the game.) That is about 16% of the company's profits per year, I can see them wanting to keep FFXI around for a while longer, maybe two more expansions after Wings. Then again, with money like that, I can also see them wanting to tap the MMO market even more.

So the long and the short of it is I'm not going to guess.

[Gulkeeva]

I see now. I'm not so sure that's a real obstacle though. Making an MMO that runs fairly well on a new but mediocre GPU is in my view a better idea than making one with ZOMG hawt gfx (like Vanguard). Running smoothly with 200 character models on my screen is far more important than being able to watch my own character model scratch its ultra high-polycount ass.

Speak for yourself. I want graphics so hot that I can tell what religion a Galka is when he walks up next to me wearing a subligar.

I'd like some high polly mithra booty on my screen myself O_o See her swaying as she walks from across the city!

[Charla]

Now that I can understand, but we all know you're just going to find a custom model and replace it anyway, Gulk.