4 ms·

Nice! I am somewhat surprised how there are no modern 2D MMORPGs. It seems like it should be inherently easier to develop those, but there is nothing. I think

Nice! I am somewhat surprised how there are no modern 2D MMORPGs. It seems like it should be inherently easier to develop those, but there is nothing. I think it's a pity because simpler engine / graphics should allows for more resources to be spent on other areas regarding the gameplay. Maybe those games just aren't popular enough to justify the development in comparison to bland but flashy 3D games..

opticfluorine 7y ago
I think you might be right about the popularity. Major commercial MMOs are deriving revenue from either subscriptions or microtransactions, with the latter becoming much more common (and requiring a far larger userbase to maintain profitability). The trend toward "bland but flashy 3D" has been around for a long time now, so it makes sense in my mind. About ~ 15 years ago there were quite a few 2D MMO engines freely available, mostly written in VB6. The two big ones were ORE (a very basic FOSS project that didn't support much beyond logging in and walking around) and the Mirage family of engines (closed source, but was licensed and forked quite a few times, most notably into the Playerworlds engine). The various Mirage engines, especially Playerworlds, really lowered the barrier to creating MMOs, and consequently there were quite a few indie "MMOs" with userbases of ~ 50 - 100 regular players. I know of at least one other FOSS engine project out there (Lunar Engine, which is much further along than my own) besides mine. My hope is that if a few easy-to-use engines are made available and promoted well, another community will form around these 2D indie MMOs. So we'll see what happens.
seventhtiger 7y ago
2D MMOs have morphed into casual mobile/web games. Full hardcore MMOs are a smaller market now with a few juggernauts, and they're all 3D.

4 ms·

Nice! I am somewhat surprised how there are no modern 2D MMORPGs. It seems like it should be inherently easier to develop those, but there is nothing. I think

by bbbobbb 7y ago

opticfluorine 7y ago
I think you might be right about the popularity. Major commercial MMOs are deriving revenue from either subscriptions or microtransactions, with the latter becoming much more common (and requiring a far larger userbase to maintain profitability). The trend toward "bland but flashy 3D" has been around for a long time now, so it makes sense in my mind. About ~ 15 years ago there were quite a few 2D MMO engines freely available, mostly written in VB6. The two big ones were ORE (a very basic FOSS project that didn't support much beyond logging in and walking around) and the Mirage family of engines (closed source, but was licensed and forked quite a few times, most notably into the Playerworlds engine). The various Mirage engines, especially Playerworlds, really lowered the barrier to creating MMOs, and consequently there were quite a few indie "MMOs" with userbases of ~ 50 - 100 regular players. I know of at least one other FOSS engine project out there (Lunar Engine, which is much further along than my own) besides mine. My hope is that if a few easy-to-use engines are made available and promoted well, another community will form around these 2D indie MMOs. So we'll see what happens.
seventhtiger 7y ago
2D MMOs have morphed into casual mobile/web games. Full hardcore MMOs are a smaller market now with a few juggernauts, and they're all 3D.