Hey, Just dled zenonia this morning, and am quite enjoying it, it's basicaly the same gamestyle as WoW for leveling and so on. I was wondering, what's the possibility of this type of game going mmorpg instead of just rpg? Would an ipod be able to handle that, or is it simply far to heavy for the processor etc.. ? Very curious as I'm pleasantly surprised by zenonia, I was not expecting this from such a tiny device...
I was thinking it would be cool to have an MMO racing game the other day actually. Imagine free roaming with other other people's cars and stuff Anyway, I think MMORPG is possible. The problem is, with all the network traffic, battery life will be an issue. Unless its a text-based MMORPG where there is not much power consumed by the graphics? lol... In any case, I think devs are all busy making peer-to-peer (pairing) and challenge (push notification) style games anyway.
Of course it would be able to handle it. On the client side, an mmorpg would not be processor intensive at all. Unless you tried to get WoW style graphics, but I believe that to be an irrelevant point since you mentioned Zenonia which is completely 2D. The problem is more to do with the infrastructure of such a game, you'd probably need WIFI, 3G might just be fast enough but its not always reliable and so players would end up with a lot of lag. Not to mention costs of the servers, ISPs etc... for the company developing the game, something that is not easily covered by the low price of apps on the appstore. This is why the majority of the mainstream mmorpgs out there charge something like £8.99 a month for an mmorpg subscription. In-app purchases are coming, to support things such as subscriptions, so we may see some crop up. But considering hardly any apps/games cost £8.99, would you be prepared to pay that much a month for an mmorpg?
Have any of you seen SevenSwords Prologue? From the looks of it, it is possible. The graphics are really good and although it isn't really an RPG, you still have a sword and different classes to choose from. You actually SEE people on the map from all around the world.
But it's only for the iphone. I know several mmorpg games coming out. outer Empires*(WILL HAVE A LOT OF USERS, they are making this game for the pc and iphone/ipod touch. Sorta like Eve exept 2D) and a asian mmorpg, 3D. Probably coming out in 2010 *available out in July
No reason why not other than the logistics of making a mmog, and the costs involved in supporting it after release (hosting, fixes, updates etc). It may not live up to everything you want though... there are cpu limitations; the number of players and things going on on-screen and the amount of data that persists in memory. The Guild Wars model would probably work well, especially with an old school zelda (or Zenonia) format. Of course you're surrendering easy chat and all the social tools that you're used to, but sure, I think there's plenty space to evolve and innovate.