MMORPG Playerbase is Important

I hate signing into a shiny new free to play MMORPG and seeing the game’s servers completely empty. This applies for MMO games as well. I remember logging into Martial Empires (It’s a sequel to Martial Heroes) from Gamigo the other day, and I was pleased to see a very active in game world. Players running around grinding and completing quests everywhere. The game also let players speak in global world chat, so it was always easy to communicate with others while grinding. Plus a trade channel made commerce in the game really easy. I found the global chat to be a lot of fun, as just talking to others was a way to keep myself busy while I completed quests. Unfortunately after Gamigo announced they would ban all U.S. Ips from accessing the game, so I stopped playing it.

After I stopped playing Martial Empires, I downloaded Beach Volleyball Online from a new MMO publisher – Digital Radiance Entertainment. As the name suggests, the game is a volleyball themed MMO and its the only one out there. After playing FIFA Online and Project Powder, I’ve grown to like sports MMOs. I didn’t like Beach Volleyball Online at all though. The core gameplay feels slow paced and broken. The graphics are also terribly glitchy and on the low end. Where the game fails the most though is its incredibly low playerbase. The game markets itself as both a sports MMO and a social game, but unfortunately with such a small playerbase, it is by no means a social MMO. It kinda tries to do what ShowUp did with the whole social aspect on top of the core gameplay.

After uninstalling Beach Volleyball Online I downloaded and installed Blade Wars – the new 2D MMORPG from ChangYou. It looks and plays a lot like Dragon Oath, except with a cool combo based combat system. The core gameplay was pretty fun, but the game had a terribly low playerbase. Seriously. I hate playing empty games, because I feel as if I’m playing them for no reason. I’d much rather play a game with an incredibly high playerbase but poor graphics and gameplay than a great game with no players. That’s just me though.

There’s a reason I go back to playing games like Alliance of Valiant Arms, S4 League and League of Legends when I get bored of other games. It’s because they all have very healthy playerbases. They’re popular games that are rarely empty.