Online Worlds Roundtable #11, Part Two

RPGVault continues their eleventh MMORPG-related roundtable, with the second installment once again discussing the game market in the Far East. An excerpt from The Matrix Online’s Toby Ragaini:

First, MMOs are still a fledgling industry. Until recently, there were few reasons a western developer would want to compete elsewhere. Only now are the technological and operational aspects of MMOs understood well enough that international launch and deployment are feasible.

To complicate matters, there are hundreds of locally developed MMOs available in China and competition among them is fierce. Even though most are technologically behind what western audiences are used to, Chinese gamers have shown little interest in localized western games. From their perspective, a western MMO isn’t necessarily superior.

For example, EverQuest, which is certainly the gorilla in the western market, fared poorly, in part because Chinese gamers were aware they were getting an “old” game, and one not designed to compete there.