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Started in 1999, Neopets was one of the first kid-friendly online virtual worlds on the web, and is still fantastically popular today. Hoping to bring their success with Neopets into the MMO world, founders Adam Powell and Donna Williams started Meteor Games in 2007 to make a game targeted at a slightly higher age bracket than Neopets. Their still-unnamed MMO, due to be shown at this year's Penny Arcade Expo (PAX), will be a seamless, 3D world with elements drawn from today's top MMOs -- World of Warcraft is specifically mentioned.

Their new game will be a drastic departure from Neopets. Not only will it be a 3D world instead of a collection of minigames, but it won't be free to play. The founders believe they need a subscription in order to produce the highest quality game, but the price will be less than WoW, and there will be an item shop of some sort where new outfits, furniture and other non-unbalancing items may be bought. Meteor Games is also looking into ways to integrate cellphones into their game. Due out in some fashion in 2009, their MMO will enter a market already dominated by Runescape and will be competing directly with SOE's Free Realms, which promises to be free to play and run also on the Playstation 3.

Neopets is famous for its huge amount of content, involvement with players and accessibility. Can Meteor Games grab that same sort of success with a more traditional MMO? CEO Adam Powell explains their strategy in this interview with Gamasutra.

On 14 November, 2003 Linden Lab caused quite a stir by announcing that users who created or published content via the Second Life service would "retain full intellectual property protection for the digital content they create, including characters, clothing, scripts, textures, objects and designs."

Essentially, the same rights that they'd have anywhere else (barring assorted terms of use/service to the contrary). It seems obvious, in many ways, but ultimately it's actually very rare. Terms of use/service which express a contradictory position are in the majority. In fact, go to the filing cabinet and pull out the contract for your current RL job. Odds are, there are a whole slew of creator rights that you've already signed away that have little or nothing to do with your job.

That, unfortunately, is the normal condition. When it comes to the new, novel, or creative -- almost everyone wants a piece of your pie, and few want to leave a slice for you, if they can avoid it. Even taking Sturgeon's (second) Law into account, competition for the remaining portion of human content and pop-culture is quite stiff.

Every few months Square/Enix lets loose a report from the anti-RMT squad they have on the Final Fantasy XI staff. These individuals are purposed with one goal: to keep the paths and streets of Vana'diel clear of monster-farming TOS-breaking gil-sellers. It's a thankless job, and even here on the site we've had people complain that it's not working. Still the reports come out, and still we see the company release word that they've dropped the banhammer on another few hundreds of individuals. It's a never-ending race, with the rats always one step ahead of the cat.

The most recent report seems to indicate their previous actions against farmers who focused on fishing have been somewhat successful. The also make mention of some anti-farming techniques implimented in the May update, with further techniques added in this most recent June update. Between these two they're hopeful named monster hunting will continue to decrease. They've also released some numbers on recent bannings, trying to give us a sense of how active the team has been. Movement enhancers look to be the most-affected group, with 400 cheaters kicked in the first month of June alone.

Gamasutra is featuring an insightful piece on the challenges and pitfalls of Western game developers looking to move their games to the extremely productive Eastern gaming markets. China, Japan, and especially Korea are world-renowned for their appreciation of videogames, and recent years have seen a number of Eastern games make the move to Europe and the US with varying degrees of success. According to article author Tim Allison, a key to addressing new marketplaces is to not only localize content and design but business models as well.

Allison runs through a number of points in this space, covering issues like console success in the region, the almost mandatory nature of online distribution, and the always-thorny issue of monetization. Possibly most interesting is the author's statement that the Korean marketplace "made" the MMO genre. "The South Korean government, both through its late 1990s subsidies for game development and rollout of the broadband network, became the key driver of this segment. Even in 2008 where overall the Korean MMOG content is not up to its usual high standard the Korean companies are still setting the industry terms."

Turbine is busy gearing up for its Korean launch of Lord of the Rings Online. The title is currently in closed beta in Korea and moving toward limited open beta. Fantasy titles are hugely popular in the country, but the enthusiasm with which beta testers are greeting LotRO has likely been spurred on by the popularity of the films directed by Peter Jackson.

MMORPG's Jon Wood recently caught up with LotRO Executive Producer Jeffrey Steefel to discuss Turbine's plans in the east. They discussed some of the details about LotRO's forthcoming Korean launch, which revealed how this might impact North American and European subscribers.

While we wait for Mythos to enter open beta so we can all play in the action-MMO inspired by Diablo II's fast, furious and inviting gameplay, we were thrilled to read this interview with Mythos' Project Director, Travis Baldree. This is one of the guys with his arms elbow-deep in the code. If you've been following Mythos' sometimes-funny, sometimes-frustrating struggles toward release on Travis' "Almost-a-Blog", then you already know that Mythos is a game that definitely proves the old canard that change is the only thing you can depend upon.

Read about the most unbalanced crafted item ever made, consignment houses, new classes and races, and when Open Beta might start ("Soon". Oops. Spoiler!)

[WarCry]

Do you feel you're getting enough value for your $15 per month MMO subscription? Casual gamers or people who are just too busy at times for games would likely say they're not getting their money's worth. It's one of the big reasons free-to-play business models are becoming increasingly popular. Dave Spohn, who covers internet games at About.com, looks at how game expenses compare to other forms of entertainment.

A lot of MMO gamers use this to justify their time sinks -- but the more time you play, the more value you get for your money. So if you play beyond 10 hours in a given week, you're actually getting your kicks for less than 50 cents per hour. Sometimes you're paying far less than 50 cents if you're a hardcore player of a particular title you sub to. But do you need to rack up ludicrous amounts of gaming time to really get the full benefit from that sub? To answer that question, Spohn looks at a few of the most popular forms of entertainment and breaks down their costs per hour in comparison to subscription games.

And not just likenesses. Metaverse developer Millions of Us intends to market likenesses, hair-styles, catchphrases, dance moves, signature moves, clothing lines, furniture collections -- you name it -- based on well-known celebs all under the banner business name of Virtual Greats. These appearances and digital accessories would be sold in dozens of virtual worlds, though you'll probably see them in Gaia Online, Habbo and Second Life first.

Deals have already been done with Justin Timberlake, Elvis Presley Enterprises, Snoop Dogg, Paris Hilton, Raven Symone, Marvel (for The Incredible Hulk), and Tila Tequila, and more are in the works.

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.

Flagship Studios' action-adventure MMO, Mythos, will be free to download and free to play. How will they ever make any money off the game? Sure, they have an item shop, but will that be enough? In this interview, Mythos' Executive Producer Max Schaefer explains how they will make the game profitable through the economics of free, bringing a World of Warcraft-ish game into a MMO market that already has a WoW, and the rise of indie games.

There's not a lot of new information in this interview, We might have asked why they didn't release Mythos as it was, and then release the Overworld as an expansion along with a lot of new content? How would they distinguish themselves from the rumored Diablo 3? What kinds of questions would you have asked about Mythos? If you can propose some really hard ones, we'll send them along and see if we can get some answers.

Massively's recent ION Game Conference coverage featured an article on developing MMO's as if they were TV shows. This idea was introduced by FireSky's Joseph Ybarra, Senior VP of Strategic Operations. FireSky hopes to run with the concept of dishing up MMO content updates in episodes, with predictable development cycles of roughly six weeks. This marriage between MMO and TV production could also lead to developing 'pilot games,' which makes sense from a company perspective. After all, it involves smaller budgets and entails less risk. The developer can expend a small amount (by standard game development budgets) and gauge player interest. If that title proves to be popular, future iterations of the game could be developed with larger budgets, building upon the storyline of the previous episodes.

Do you think that gamers would have more of a say in what the creators do with these stories than they do with TV shows, since an episodic MMO is an interactive medium? Would this be a welcome change in the MMO industry, as opposed to waiting for a few years for that next game?

Two years ago, BusinessWeek did a cover story on Second Life and sparked an explosion of interest in marketing in virtual worlds. Many of the early efforts to market in Second Life were little more than unimaginative billboards copying real-world advertising. Despite downbeat reports, more than a dozen advertising agencies are actively developing advertising campaigns within Second Life.

BusinessWeek looks back on how successful ad agencies have used the particular strengths of the virtual world to get their messages across. Second Life users are intensely devoted to their world. Advertisers who identify the various sub-communities and narrow their focus can put the power of a dedicated fan community to work for them. Secondly, using online space to mimic real world advertising, such as putting goods in a virtual shopping mall, actively rejects the very things that make advertising in virtual worlds so effective. Lastly, use the brands the virtual worlds brings to the table, such as Playboy encouraging third-party brands to sell virtual versions of their goods on their Playboy Island.

Publishing your brochure unchanged in a virtual world won't entice anyone. Put your products on display in a creative, interactive way, let your customers enjoy virtual versions of your products, and know your community, and your virtual world money will be well-spent.

[Via Virtual Worlds News]

In the months leading up to the Summer Olympics in Beijing, with world events being what they are, it's not often that foreigners residing in the mainland turn to China Daily's English pages for the news. This little gem is an exception, however. When you picture the man who's fast becoming a leading light in China's expanding online gaming industry, who do you see?

Maybe you picture a slick twenty-something entrepreneur from Hong Kong, decked out in a $5000 suit and shuffling between calls on a few wafer-thin cell phones. Or do you envision a middle-aged bureaucrat turned businessman from Beijing, using his network of connections and riding the tide of interest in online games? Stereotypes aside, no matter how you picture Shi Yuzhu, that aforementioned 'leading light,' you're probably wrong. The 46-year-old CEO of Giant Interactive (NYSE: GA) is more outwardly eccentric than most would guess. Shi, who prefers tracksuits over 3-piece-suits, is reportedly the first CEO ever to ring the NYSE bell in anything but formal attire... much less athletic wear.

Whether you spent a hundred dollars or a half a million on your virtual world marketing, the odds are you failed. If you didn't, some people will still call it a failure, but that's as may be.

When you're sitting with the team trying to analyze the results (you do that after every campaign, right?) and working on why user-engagement wasn't higher, rest assured that probably the biggest, most important reason isn't even mentioned.

I could bore you all today by starting my article with a lengthy story about the pre-history of your beloved MMORPGs, but I'll cut to the important part: Once upon a time there was a little game called DikuMUD. Similar in nature to the popular Dungeons and Dragons tabletop roleplaying game, it quickly took off with the geek crowd and became something of a phenomenon. In 1991, the source code for the game was made public and it grew into the most popular code base out there for the creation of multi-user dungeons, largely attributed to the ease with which the code could be set up and run. This led to an explosion of rather similar games that eventually gave rise to the more modern virtual fantasy worlds like Ultima Online, EverQuest, and World of Warcraft (each of these have been compared to DikuMUDs at various times). What's the point of rehashing all of this?

Simply this: While many people would probably disagree with me, the proliferation of a popular, established code base that was proven to attract players and was easy to set up "out of the box" allowed enormous innovation and creativity to flourish. At one point, there were so many MUDs available on the web that you could go to a website designed specifically to sort out what features you wanted in yours (and play it free of charge, most of the time). Given the wild popularity of World of Warcraft today, I can't help but wonder what would happen to the online gaming industry if Blizzard decided to start selling their source code to people interested in starting up their own game.