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Hellgate: London is dead, for real this time
It's up! It's down! It's up! It's down! It's... sideways?That's the story for the ever growing saga of Hellgate: London in a nutshell. This time, however, it's not coming back and there should be no more rumors that it is coming back. HanbitSoft, the Asian publisher of the game, has finally clarified to GameCyte that they do not have the publishing rights to Hellgate: London in the United States or Europe, just in Asia, excluding Japan.Currently those rights are held by Namco-Bandai, who have made the decision to shut down the Hellgate servers as of February 1st.So it's not coming back. Even though it will still have press releases in English and have updates being made by a US developer, it's not coming back. However, if you really want to play, we suggest moving to Asia, as it will still be going strong over there.
Top industry CEOs weigh in on the cell phone MMO debate
After a recent Game Power Panel at this year's CES, GameCyte caught up with a few MMO big-wigs to ask the burning question: can the MMO experience extend to mobile phones? From Turbine to Gaia Online, the companies' CEOs all had differing views.Dr. Lars Buttler of Trion World Network, and Jim Crowley of Turbine both agreed that the mobile phone is not really the place for a full-blown multiplayer experience. Although they did essentially agree with others like Brett Close of 38 Studios in the thinking that there are certainly extensions of an MMO that can be achieved through a cell. Checking the auction house, training skills or even reading quest text could all be done on-the-go. Check out the entire post over at GameCyte for some more opinions on mobile MMOs.
Nielsen says WoW still tops the list
GameCyte has gone over the Nielsen ratings for 2008, and they're basically saying exactly what we've heard with other sites like GamerDNA: that WoW commanded PC playtime this year. On a list with such oldies on it as The Sims, CounterStrike, and even Blizzard's own Diablo II, World of Warcraft sits at the top of the charts with an average of 671 minutes (about 11 hours) played per week. This tells us two things: one, lots of people are playing World of Warcraft a lot. And two, PCs need some better games.There is an interesting trend in these numbers, especially when you compare them with last year. Last year, Nielsen claimed about 17 hours a week of playtime for WoW players, so playtime this year is actually down overall (and while we don't see month to month numbers, GameCyte says it was before the Wrath release, which makes sense). Sure, you could say that with dailies and the easier instances, players just don't have to play the game as much, but really, this seems to reflect the bigger trend: that WoW is leveling out.There are probably years left in this game -- as we said on the podcast last week, the only real way people will stop playing WoW is when Blizzard finally turns the servers off. But all the numbers we've seen definitely point to a slowing down point among the game's subscribers. Lots of people (11.5 milion) are still playing World of Warcraft a lot. But not as much as they used to.[via WorldofWar]
Opinion: pay more money to experience less game
Think about this a moment: people are actually paying money to experience less of their games. Every day. Probably all day. These are often games that they've already purchased and, in effect, pay someone else to play for them. The existence of RMT and power-leveling services isn't exactly breaking news, but it makes these aspects of MMOs no less bizarre a notion. The thriving business built upon such tenets of how online games should operate is a matter of some concern to Jesse Henning, a writer at GameCyte. Despite the can of worms it can be,"from a business standpoint, subsidizing RMT is a fantastic move," Henning writes. If players will buy items and currency outside of the system anyway, what company wouldn't prefer that cash to enter their own pockets? "From a design standpoint, however, RMT is a treacherous path to walk," Henning cautions, and goes on to look at the pitfalls of game design that incorporates RMT. Conversely, the writer then discusses the level-disparity design problem in World of Warcraft and how it actually encourages players to buy gold and use power-leveling services. Henning also looks at how the ancillary services operating within and around a world pull in more revenue than the world operation itself, citing Raph Koster on the issue as well. Have a look at the piece at GameCyte, which discusses how RMT affects console gaming as well as MMOs, and just how inescapable it really is.
