There are quite a bit of MMO shooters on the market, most of them first person, some of them third person. Everyone has their preference, but I feel that third person shooters require more skill, mainly because players have a lot more to focus on than just a cross hair. Using the camera effectively in a third person shooter is extremely important and can be the difference between a kill and a death. This is especially true in games like Battlefield Heroes and GunZ where players are given such flexible control of the camera. The ability to control and use the camera effectively adds another layer of gameplay to an otherwise simple genre.

Even though I feel that third person shooters demand more skill from players, there’s no doubt that first person MMO shooters also require some skill. This is especially true in tactical MMOFPS games like Sudden Attack and Soldier Front where players literally die in a single shot or two. Normally in these types of games, players with the fastest reaction times almost always win, making them extremely brutal for newbies. The only way for newbies to actually do well in a lot of tactical MMOFPS games is to fire rapidly towards their opponent’s general direction hoping for a headshot. Players new the MMO shooter genre should stick with games like Combat Arms and WolfTeam, because headshots are much more difficult to get, allowing newbies to stay alive longer and enjoy the game a bit more. WolfTeam is actually one of the most unique MMOFPS games out there because it allows players transform at any time into a melee oriented werewolf with superior speed and attack.

For a long time, pay to play games like World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online were considered untouchable, but as it stands the MMORPG market is evolving. More and more free MMORPG games are being released every week while only one or two major pay to play MMORPGs are being released every year. Just because there are a lot of free to play games though doesn’t mean any of them are really ‘great’, but I can safely say that the ‘latest generation’ of free to play titles are downright amazing.

New free to play titles like Atlantica Online, Runes of Magic and Dragonica Online can actually stand toe-to-toe against pay to play MMO juggernauts like World of Warcraft and Eve Online. These game’s aren’t ‘cheap’, as they have great production values. Heck, Runes of Magic looks just as good as World of Warcraft graphic wise.  Those who have played Dragonica Online will vouch for me when I say that game is downright amazing for a free to play title. Heck, it’s a lot better than some pay to play games like EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies.

The real question is, when will pay to play games die off? The free to play market is just growing way too fast while free to play games are only getting better and better. Games like World of Warcraft and Eve online won’t be able to charge $15 a month when there are literally hundreds of free alternatives that are equally as good.

Why is it that more than one MMORPG game publisher publishes the same game? It doesn’t make any sense. Games like Nostale for example are available in the United States through two different publishers. Players can sign up for the game on nostale.net or on nostale.uforia.com. Isn’t it weird that the same game is available on two different websites? On two completely different servers?  I’m not sure what Nostale’s developers were thinking by licensing their game to two different companies in the same region, because as it stands the game’s playerbase is now divided. This really hurts the ‘user experience’ as a game’s community is a big part of MMO games, and having a game’s community split totally sucks for players. To be fair though, NosTale isn’t the only game that’s published by more than one company. La Tale for example is currently being published by the folks over at OGPlanet for North American users, but it looks like Aeriagames will also begin publishing the same exact game soon, as La Tale is currently in Closed beta over at Aeria. Another game, Luminary: Rise of the Goonzu used to be published by both Ndoors and IJJI, but luckily the folks over at IJJI merged their servers with the Ndoors game.

The question now is, why on earth do game developers license their games to multiple publishers? Heck, if I was OG Planet, I would be furious at La Tale’s developers for giving their game to Aeria, especially after initially giving it to OG Planet! Successful games like Atlantica Online, Runes of Magic and Fiesta Online for example don’t license their games to multiple publishers for a reason, so why do some people do it? I’m pretty sure this practice has a lot to do with greed. Developers are looking to milk their games as much as possible, but I feel that this practice will only end up hurting everyone, as a divided community will hurt the user experience causing some people to quit, less players will hurt the publisher and the less revenue publishers make the less the developers make. So, what’s the point of this article? To urge developers to stop licensing their games to multiple publishers!

Honestly, I think the free to play MMORPG game market is growing way too fast. It seems like every month a n ambitious new game publisher opens its doors for the first time in hopes of making it big in a market overflowing with MMORPGs. Companies like Aeria Games that have multiple successful titles like Last Chaos, Twelve Sky and Shaiya are making money hand over fist in the lucrative micro-transaction based business, but other smaller companies like Uforia who only publish smaller less known games like Red War, Three Kingdoms and Nostale are in risk of going bankrupt. The fact is, there are far more online games out there than the amount of players needed to make them all profitable. What this means is that some of these free MMORPG publishers are doomed to failure.

Now, I bet a lot of readers are thinking, “where are the facts? The numbers?”,  Well  I don’t have any numbers in front of me, but I can say from firsthand experience that a LOT of MMORPG games are deserted. Stone Age 2 for example, only has a handful of players online at any given time. A HANDFUL of players. There’s no way the game’s publisher can recoup their expenses for the game with only a dozen or so players online at any given time. I’ve personally played dozens of games where the total number of players online were less than 100. Personally, I’d love to see every game bustling with activity, but with so many Free MMO games on the market, this isn’t possible. Surprisingly, there are very few major browser games with this problem, as almost every browsed based MMORPG I played had a healthy playerbase.