Nikudada

Already being made but a kudos has to go out to the MMO based on Tad Williams Otherworld. Sadly the otherworld series is close to impossible to explain and the books are about 4000 pages combined. The ending, however, is one of the best i've ever read and certain aspects continue to blow my mind.

How the hell should I know. I have to win the damn game first before I know your wrong. At this point i'm just guessing.

So I could finally have the Conversation:
Me: "Hey Bill, don't mess with the witch, you have no health."
Bill: "Pffffft"
Me: "Turn. Off. The Flashlight."
Bill: "....."
Me: "Don't do it bill."
Bill: "thehehehehehe"
Me: "Bill, No. Stop. Bill...Biiiiiiilllll"
Dead Bill: "She turned me into a newt."

I appreciate your detailed response. While i agree that it would be a hard sell you can't deny that there are a glut of investors willing to risk pretty serious capital on the MMO model. Funcom managed to secure an additional 30 million in private equity last year so I don think its too absurd. Really the biggest barrior from a financial perspective would be ensuring you market your potential game as something which would will, given time, WILL work. Risk, in this space, is inherent. I would think a project like the mmo Otherland would seem overy abitious to most investors but they apparently got somone to foot the bill.
I suppose, though, the question remains if it wouldn't just be smarter to build an engine from scratch since you would (and i'm going off what you wrote) have to maniuplate so much of EVEs engine that it would have the same number of bugs accociated as a new engine.

Could their engine and server tech be bought by another company to make something akin to planetside? I mean, a mmofps like wwII online that doesn't look like it was designed in the late eighties would be pretty amazing.

Gamestop or Best Buy

At the risk of getting flamed I would have to also submit the bard from DDO (Dungeons and Dragons online). While you may argue that the world really isn't 'persistent', you can't deny that the bard was an interesting class to play.

You could spec yourself into a ccing through your songs or spells, buffing, healing, zapping or whacking. I spent many hours levelling different types of bards in that game (since you could multiclass if you wanted) and it was great to do an elite dungeon with a group of players who let me fascinate a room after I buffed the whole party with spells (such as haste or courage) and then healed them as they battled through everything.

Master Chief - cause I'm Gordon Freeman boyo...and you didn't say i couldn't bring a crowbar....

Well I should have seen this coming. They had a lackluster showing at E3 which showed NO new content and was pretty much the same old crap. No news on siege warfare, optimization, dx10, spell weaving, etc. Then, yesterday, their website is down. No official forums and I sat there and didn't sell out my position because i'm dumb. Thank you Funcom. Thank you so much. Now I shall have to go and buy more of you're stock since you are now 42% down.

I think it boils down to what Greg Costikyan has said in 'his death to the games industry' manifesto. A game has only two weeks to gain enough sales momentum to succeed. The 'amazaing' ten minutes of revolution inherent in GOW is well deserved as no other game is nearly as viceral and gritty. Most movies don't get as picturesque as running does in Gears. That being said, if you see the same shot over and over in a single movie you may pan the director for lack of vision. In a game we usually let that issue slide since our perspective is based on targeting whatever is targeting us. So yes, the ten mintues of amazement wear off in Gears but only because you have to get into the business of killing lest you get killed.

Still, I do agree that in terms of tilt Gears offered very little. Past some of the wow moments there was nothign to really market the game. Sure, some of the weapons were new. Sure it was dang pretty. But I want just a bit more for a game that nets close to a 10 across the internet. I want other developers to fall back into their chairs and wonder why they never did 'that' amazing thing in their game. To me, that hasn't happened in next gen consoling. To me, every shooter we've got thus far has had the 'new' (and I say that liberally) concept of cover before you shoot or team based play or a fancy new way of tossing grenades. I say new with the hopes that you pick up on my sarcasm (which is impossible to write). I read through all the comments and no one really explains what this elusive aspect of Gears is that makes it so special. Seriously. Where is it? Hello? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?