Nanovor MMO Evolves Thanks to Unity

When Nanovor first launched, it wasn’t a very exciting game. Players had to download the nearly 500 mb client and battle using bug-like creatures in a mostly 2D arena. Worse still, the background was solid black. No color, no flavor, and certainly not much depth. Even at that time I was asking myself, “couldn’t this have been done on a browser?”

Well it looks like the answer was ‘yes!’ Smith and Tinker, the development studio behind Nanovor, has recently launched a brand new version of the game called Nanovor Evolution. The new version has replaced the old one, meaning there’s no going back. This has upset a small pocket of veterans, but it was a logical step in taking the game forward. Nanovor Evolution was designed using Unity, a powerful yet easy to use game development tool. Now, Nanovor only requires a tiny browser plugin rather than a huge client. Better still, the graphics and gameplay have been vastly improved. The character designs, background, and environments are now fully three dimensional. The game can now compete directly with other turn based MMORPGs and pet themed MMORPGs like Bakugan Dimensions.

Nanovor Evolution is only the latest in a series of free to play browser based MMOs and MMORPGs to utilize Unity. Cartoon Network’s FusionFall was perhaps the first major MMORPG to use Unity and it has better visuals and more high quality content than most client based MMORPGs! Games like Nanovor Evolutions have superior graphics than client based MMORPGs like Hero Online from Netgame and Dragon Oath / Zentia from ChangYou. There’s also Tiger Woods Online by Electronic Arts. That’s a major video game publisher throwing its weight behind Unity. The game has beautiful golf courses, and can be played in short bursts thanks to the auto-save feature which remembers player progression through a course. Silverlode Interactive, the studio behind the MMORTS Saga also has a Unity based browser game. It’s called Captains of DarkTide and is set at sea. Players can command a variety of ships, visit distant ports, and fire broadsides against one another.

Unity is not just a browser game tool, it can be used to create large single player games as well. But for a variety of reasons, I believe it will generally be put to use to create browser games that look and play as well as traditional client games. When more and more studios discover the versatility of the tool, they will flock to it. How long till social MMORPGs and facebook games use Unity? The developers of Nanovor Evolution already have several job listing on their site for Unity developers. Expect other companies to follow.

Are Facebook Games Free MMOs?

As Facebook gets bigger and bigger (it’s currently the second biggest website on the internet) more and more games will launch on it. Some of the most popular Facebook games these days are Farmville, Mafia Wars and Petville. For the most part these games aren’t MMOs, but they do have cooperative elements, so it wouldn’t be unfair to classify them as free to play MMOs. After all, they are all free and they are online. I actually started playing these “social games” on Facebook pretty recently, and I’m not quite sure what to think of them. It’s not exactly fair to compare them to full blown MMORPGs like Heroes of Might and Magic Online from TQ Digital and Digimon Battle from WeMade, but there are fair comparisons out there.

YoVille for example is a social Facebook that plays a lot like Gaia Online or even OurWorld. Both Gaia Online and OurWorld would be considered traditional free to play browser MMOs, so there is room for comparison amongst these games. As is, Facebook games are absurdly popular. Farmville for example has some 30 million active users on Facebook. That’s on par with mega popular MMORPGs like LaTale from OGPlanet and MapleStory from Nexon. Though it doesn’t quite surpass RuneScape from Jagex yet. Still, 30 million active users. Wow. That’s quite a number. The thing about Facebook Games is that they only started popping up a year or so ago, so within a years time they exploded in popularity and became mainstream!

As I said earlier, I really don’t know what to think of these games. I tried playing both Treasure Isle and YoVille yesterday and neither kept my attention for long. Treasure Isle did keep me entertained a bit longer, but meh. To be fair, I did like Farmville, but that’s only because I’m a fan of the Harvest Moon games. I remember playing the N64 Harvest Moon game for at least 50 hours! The game boy advanced one – Friends of Mineral Town was also a good one. Aside from Treasure Isle and Yoville though, I also gave Social City a try, which was basically a Sim City style city building game. It was a bit too basic for my liking, but the concept behind it was pretty neat. I did get bored of it in an hour though.

I guess Facebook MMOs just aren’t my thing, at least the ones available today. Maybe they’ll get better in the future. Who knows. For now though, I think I’ll stick with my client based MMORPGs. On that note, I just finished re-downloading Lunia from ijji. Since I first played the game a year or so ago, the game has went through a bunch of major updates, so it should rock now. Anyway guys! Later!