Wall of text alert! I was hesitating if I should post a summary of what 2010’s online gaming industry was like to me, as my blog ain’t really big and I am not exactly a professional writer who writes a few thousand words without making any grammatical errors. But after some thoughts, I just thought that I should do this and thank the people who read this blog regularly.
First of all, 2010, to me, was one of ups and downs. From my point of view, not many quality MMOs were released. The upside? Tons of nice Asian MMOs were announced with quite a few scheduled for a 2011 English release. This is why I am really hyped up for 2011.
Will 2011 see the rise of P2P MMOs again? The last big P2P launch I could think of in recent times was Aion, with the rest lagging far behind. Cataclysm was big as well, but once again, WoW is in a category of its own. Titles like Star Trek Online and Champions Online did not exactly took the market by storm. And not to forget, the fateful launch of Final Fantasy XIV… Back to my first sentence, 2011 will bring us TERA, and hopefully for the English version, Archeage and Blade & Soul (even though I am skeptical about a 2011 English launch for both).
I am really, really excited for TERA, and will be getting an awesome new rig in a few weeks just to prepare for the game’s arrival. The Old Republic will not be out in 2011 as officially mentioned previously, so I can’t really think of any other English-developed P2P MMOs… Hmn~
For the F2P corner, the spotlight will no doubt be on the upcoming non-target and action MMOs, including Dragon Nest and hopefully, Continent of the Ninth (C9). I am not really sure about Core Blaze (English) making it for the 2011 party, but we shall see. Dragon Nest will no doubt be the biggest F2P MMO to launch in 2011, and given the lack of true 3D action MMO in the market, the game will shine with proper marketing. I have really high hopes for the game, with more features like housing and farming to be added in the near future, including the release of the very first Dragon’s nest (as in really an actual nest).
And not to forget, for the more “traditional” MMORPG, we will see the official release of Perfect World Entertainment’s Forsaken World. Really, I have yet to see any F2P MMOs which is even near the amount of content and size of the world near Forsaken World’s. For those who are lamenting about the Closed Beta, there is still around 40% of features not implemented. Be patient!
Working in the MMO industry myself, I do have some information I have to keep mum about, but I can tell you that more innovative MMOs will be coming. The more recent one will include Divine Souls working with Xbox 360’s Kinect system, which I think is an awesome function (but wrong game). More MMOs will be linked with iPhone apps (this is getting hot in Korea now) and Facebook too, including updating your status on Facebook everytime you level up, you gained a rare item etc (buy me a Macbook Air if you want to know which upcoming games will have this feature). I am really glad to see all these “enhancements” in technology, as I personally thought that the MMO industry will go really stale in no time. And oh, there is a game I reported about, which players can activate certain actions from their characters by giving a command through the speaker. Go find it :p
And finally, I will like to thank all the readers who somehow managed to find this blog (or through my shameless promotion in the OnRPG forums). Without you guys, I wouldn’t have hit more than 500,000 pageviews within a year (and get other “big” websites copying my content). And also to all the various foreign gaming websites, from Russia, Italy, France, Taiwan, Hungary, North America and more (sorry if I missed out any) who linked back to my blog!
For those who emailed me about having a cooperative partnership link to each other’s websites, I will be looking into it soon, but no with guarantees! Wow, I have really gathered quite a community here eh :p And before I forget, to those few representatives from companies such as Perfect World and Gamania for emailing me and giving me a pat on my back for my… erh… work. All these blessings will no doubt give me the will and strength to carry on posting into 2011 despite having to juggle college and a full time job 🙂
Happy New Year to all and…. *thinks*… Stay healthy while gaming! 🙂 And if you are in the gaming industry, do email me your LinkedIn ID as I am looking to expand my contacts! Peace out 🙂
