that game was made by a man who is the guru of mmo's and even told ea what they did wrong with uo.
that game is star wars galaxies.
and it was stolen from us vets by sony online. it was stolen and held hostage by two systems one a so called combat upgrade that nerfed the combat system. and then soe started to give into the whiners and nerf jedi ever month. and jedi was one of the best things about swg, but soe caved in to people who wanted to a i win button.
and then in winter of 2005 the game was held hostage by a system called the nge.
the nge turned what was once the greatest mmo made into a shell. it's so bad tiggs who ran the swg forums got fired for defending the players and telling soe to roll the game back. the game went from 250k players down to under 10k as today.
if you want a game that was fun and great then help us the swg vets reclaim the pre-cu system.
we had a great game that was ahead of it's time. that game was made by a man who is the guru of mmo's and even told ea what they did wrong with uo. that game is star wars galaxies. and it was stolen from us vets by sony online. it was stolen and held hostage by two systems one a so called combat upgrade that nerfed the combat system. and then soe started to give into the whiners and nerf jedi ever month. and jedi was one of the best things about swg, but soe caved in to people who wanted to a i win button. and then in winter of 2005 the game was held hostage by a system called the nge. the nge turned what was once the greatest mmo made into a shell. it's so bad tiggs who ran the swg forums got fired for defending the players and telling soe to roll the game back. the game went from 250k players down to under 10k as today. if you want a game that was fun and great then help us the swg vets reclaim the pre-cu system.
They took away your freedom to basically dumb the game down and they destroyed it. I wish other game companies would learn from this lesson, rather than trying to be too easy like a WoW clone. Not knowing what to do is an adventure. Following glowing exclamation points around is dull.
Ultima Online was an unplayable fiasco largely driven to obscurity by player killers, and WoW is a smooth-running game with much more content and far better rules and mechanics. EQ1 was far better than UO, and WoW is far better than EQ1.
Also, now we have innovative games like CoX. MMO's have come a very long way since their fringe beginnings.
Ok, I am going to hold the dissenting idea here. I started with a pre-MMORPG with Kingdom of Drakkar, a TELNET game with minimal icon graphics and 50 people online were a lot. I have also played MUDs (mostly Diku). I beta tested UO and EQ and played EQ for quite a while before I quited the scene. Now I am playing WOW and tried out almost every single MMORPG. Here is my take. There are TWO schools of thoughts. One is that the game should be a sandbox (UO, Eve Online) and you rely on interaction, evolution of the world to entertain. The other one is a fixed set of content (EQ, WOW, ...) and the social aspect is to help the players to enjoy the fixed, sometime linear content. The formal is very very hard to do. I know many here loves UO but I hated it. It is a PK-heaven (or hell depending on which side you are on) during beta. In fact, that is the reason I went to EQ instead. A sandbox game can decent into chaos if behavior of players are not restricted within some bounds. The primary reason, i think, is that I am (and probably many are) looking for entertainment and an escape. If I want stress, real life is full of it. So I don't need extra stress and extra work in my games. WOW filled the role PERFECTLY. Sure, you can make finding a NPC a chore but most people do NOT want the realism of taking hours to hunt for a person. WOW succeeded because it pushes MMORPG in the direction MOST (but not all) people wants. Easy, fun entertainment without the stress. Sure you will get tired of it after 70 levels and 20 raids. However, I am sure by that time, Blizzard will come up with their NEXT MMORPG. WOW did advance MMORPG gameplay, abate incrementally, though not in the direction which many wants here. Its highly polished gameplay, with little details like quest events and things like that, make grinding/questing fun. While it is not a true sandbox world, I am a happy customer. By the size of their subscription base, I would bet more people are like me than the hardcore MMORPGers.
Hmm, the problem with your point is equating sandbox games with lack of content and rampant freeform PKing. This was so in the beginning but things changed - EQ had harsh death penalties but no one will now complain that linear, quest-driven games suck because they must have harsh death penalties. For one, the sandbox games don't have to be like that (you can have freeform without PKing and with lots of dev-made content) and second, I believe that a true next-gen MMORPG won't be either truly "sandbox" or " linear" but something else... what exactly I don't know but I can speculate from the inherent technological qualities of the genre.
To make my point with an example - Second Life. The MOST sandbox game out there, extremely popular and no player killing at all. I'm not saying that Second Life is the way to go because it is not a proper RPG, I'm just pointing at a novel way at looking at computer game design - giving players the tools to create content instead of raw content itself.
Today it is almost unthinkable to publish a FPS or RTS or almost any of the top genres without giving the players tools to make their own maps, mods etc. Why this isn't so in MMORPGs which are the genre most liable to profit from this model - both because of their social aspect and the revenue model which works over time? It's been proven that giving the players means to actually tinker with the game goes a long way towards making the game a "hobby" instead of one-off entertainment as well as providing a flow of fresh content which is completely cost-free for the devs. This immensely increases the lifetime of a game - the main irony is that this is now a standard in non-online games and virtually unknown/unthinkable in MMORPGs whose revenue directly depends on longevity.
I know this sounds crazy to implement in a competetive environment such as your typical fantasy MMORPG but imho this is something to think about. Players usually go crazy over player housing for example, spending huge amounts of time working on it and it has no bearing on the game "proper" itself. I'm getting whimsical at this point but does anyone remember an ancient game "Dungeon Keeper", a great hit a loong time ago? Here you had your dungeon-crawler turned on it's head - this was a "dungeon management simulator". You were a fantasy bad guy digging out and managing your own dungeon to withstand attacks from various pesky heroes. Something like this may conceivably be implemented in a MMORPG environment - one player creates a dungeon using a limited set of resources and elements while the other players attempt to rob it.
The second interesting idea is introducing a world-simulator AI to provide the players with an ever-changing global context. Imagine a game of Civilization with players being individuals in a world with ever-changing borders, wars between nations, technological advances etc... This idea (although in a limited fashion atm) has been slowly making appearance in some new games - Tabula Rasa and future Aion which all feature an NPC faction which unpredictably influences the world-state. Another take on it is in Age of Conan where player owned cities will compete with aggressive AI-driven ones, giving you a constant stream of unpredictable (and thus more entertaining) game events.
There are many many similar and very interesting, non-standard and already existing concepts and ideas which might boost the genre immensely, both in terms of variety and longevity. However, it seems that for now we're stuck with "grind xp for levels in a static world and then do some end game until you're bored stiff" formula which is ported directly from single-player rpgs. Imo MMORPGs should finally move from this unnatural model.
Technically speaking MMO's have come a long way baby. In 10 years they basically went from little colored blobs to stunning animated art. UI's and stability have also improved for the most part a hundred times over.
Where many of us have the issue isn't the technical changes but the mechanical ones. Rule sets have gotten easier and level design is on the kindergarden level. Writer talent is almost non-existant for the mostpart making most content and lore a complete waste as its hardly integrated into the game at all.
So while MMOs are much prettier to look at today, they are much less challenging and have far less depth then the older ones. Its a trade off I guess.
As MMO companies continue to focus on grapics (this game genre is totally unsuited to be leading the way in the graphics dept anyway) something gets sacrificed and that ends up being the actual gameworlds and rulesets. At least everything looks awesome when you get sent out to kill 10 rats.
Looks - 10 years ago
Today
Its going to be fun to see where this genre goes in the next 10 years. Games like LotRs are not that bad to play and do create a level of visual immersion that frankly was not possible 10 years ago.
What everyone moans about (myself included) is it plays the same as most other recent releases. If this game had released 10 years ago as is, it would have stunned the world.
No doubt MMOs will continue to evolve and change.
Fresh ideas will eventually take root and the gameplay will catch up to the graphics.
10 Years ago the Market, MMO's, PC Games, Consoles and even handhelds was just not the same as todays market...
See back in 1998 when Ultima Online came out it was for the most part 'new' again for the most part... Granted they did have some semi MMO's before UO. SSI's Gold Box Neverwinter Nights on AOL, Red Dragon on some BBS's, Dark Sun Online... UO however was a first in my eyes... I mean Neverwinter Nights isn't something people knew off the top of their head. Dark Sun Online, same deal... The idea of running just UO, having the Player pay $10 dollars a month and running it with whatever ISP he or she wanted was not a bad one....
Still 10 years ago the whole gaming market just wasn't the same... We had just moved into going with Cd's over Floppy Disks and Cartridges. PC Games had just moved out of the days of the big games being turn based strategy and role playing games, along with Flight Sims and semi-3d games. Into well a new market, Real Time Strategy games like Command and Conquer and Warcraft, Real Time RPG's like Diablo or Baldur's Gate. True 3d games like Jedi Knight, Quake and Half-Life... Flight Sims just didn't do 'as well' as they did years ago. Even Consoles and Handhelds changed, gone was Nintendo being the king of consoles, Sony had taken over. Nintendo did still control the handheld market tho...
Dare I say this but I see 1998 till the end of 2001 as the new Golden Age of Gaming...
See back then Video Games where still 'nerdy' if you will... Oh granted you had some hit titles selling like mad like the Sims, Half-Life, Pokemon (yes I have to put that down...) and Final Fantasy 7, along with the other norm games like Madden Football and the like... Still gaming wasn't mainstream and MMO's, well lets face it, back then UO and later on EQ were 'new' for the times...
Now I kinda have a soft spot for those days... I mean soooo many games showed off new things! Half-Life showed that you could have a story driven FPS title with almost 'real' combat. Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament showed really good online play. Homeworld had this great story driven RTS game that just felt like a really good Sci-Fi show or movie, System Shock 2... Well dear god I can go on about System Shock 2... Fallout and other games like Baldur's Gate would bring in good actors to do voice over work... Hell Star Trek Voyager:Elite Force had a storyline that blew the show away!
So why do I think things started to change in 2001? Around the start of 2002?
Maybe it was ummm things that happened that I won't get into... But more and more people started to get into gaming... But tell the truth the change I saw was with my real life friends... Before some of them played Video Games now and then. Then came the Xbox and Halo and ya know I still remember the night where my friend Matt called me, Matt has been a 'cool guy' in my books... Still he calls me up saying "Dude!!! Come over!!! We are doing 16 person Halo!!!!" I showed up and saw friends of mine get sooooo into Halo! It was insane! It blew my mind! It made me think...
Are Video Games becoming mainstream? Are friends of mine who used to say "Oh Gaming is for nerds!" now turning over a new leaf and becoming Gamers? Believe it or not alot of them did, and ya know the market as I saw it started to change...
Started with UO, in 1998 UO was a 'hardcore' game if you will. Gaining skills was hard, going outside a town got you killed by a gang of Player Killers most of the time. By the end of 2001 UO wasn't the same game, it was much more easy to get into. The Player Killers ended up being a thing of the past, but something we'll get into in a bit. Friends of mine started to sign up for UO or EQ. Most of them enjoyed the game, most of whom just wanted something to enjoy and have fun with. Then the new games started to get 'dumbed down' a bit... Command and Conquer Red Alert 2 was much more easy then the first Command and Conquer. Freelancer, a game I enjoyed to death was one of the most dumbed down Space Shooters ever! Everything was mouse driven in the game!
It was really in 2004 when I saw how much gaming had changed....
Maybe it was going and getting a copy of Halo 2 and seeing a good sized line for it... Maybe it was seeing my friends get more and more into MMO's. Maybe it was seeing UO turn more into an Everquest like game, rather then Raph Koster's and Richard Garriots RP Dream World... I think the big thing was Doom 3, now I ran out and got my copy of Doom 3 when it came out. I remember the reviews saying it was great, then almost a month later the backlash started.... "Doom 3 uses cheap tactics. Doing headshots doesn't do anything. Doom 3 SUCKS!" Here was a game that by god I enjoyed and people just tore it a new one....
See something I saw on my time in UO came to mind... Trammel in 2000, when UO went and for the most part took out Player Killing about two years after it came out. New people did come in, however if you looked at the forums, you would think it was the worst game ever. People screaming for Classic Servers and or Rollbacks to the old game. People talking about how the game should die rather then have that change... Most of the people screaming where Player Killers, but the big thing I saw back then was this... Most of them where Hardcore UO Players...
What we have now is a new market, the 8 year olds that played Pokemon back in 1998 are now playing Mass Effect and other games. We have more and more people coming into gaming, be it with the new systems like the Wii, Xbox 360 or PS3. We have games like Rainbow 6 going from a slow moving 'real' FPS to more of an Action Driven game that plays like 24 with Rainbow 6:Vegas. RPG's like Mass Effect and BioShock bring more of a real time FPS like Combat System into the game. Halo 2 and 3 and even Call of Duty 2, 3 and 4 throwing out the old heath bar system, in place of the active heath system of hide and heal.
And yes MMO's have changed as well... The big games are much more easy to play and have a shorter learning curve then the older UO like games... Still the thing is people are screaming about everything...
What we now have is a 'hardcore' vs 'casual' war if you will... Hit the SWG Forums, or the Fallout 3 Forums and see what I mean... We have the hardcore players of those games, screaming about changes too them. Much like UO had back in 2000... What those Players I feel are screaming are "Why are you changing the game! Dumbing it down when you have us!"
As much as some of you will hate to hear it, things change. And gaming has changed... It's not 1998 anymore with the only way to play online is on a PC. MMO's are not going to be the hardcore, insanely hard titles like UO and EQ of the past. Rather they have to move ahead and those games have to be more.... How can I put this... Newbie and Casual Friendly...
We have come far, not just with MMORPG's but gaming as a whole. Last year showed it, more and more people are going out and gaming. Be it on a Wii, 360, PS3 or PC. More people are getting into MMORPG's and over time the games will change, it won't be the hardcore friendly games of the past. But more open to all rather then some...
As an older gamer I will look back at the days of staying up late to blast TIE Fighters in X-Wing, or try to make it to Level 7 in Ultima Underworld.. But I for one do want to see more people get into gaming and see gaming grow, along with MMORPG's...
Some of you hold on to the notion that we're just on the brink of an explosion of mmorpg good ness and we're just in a rough patch that started in 2003-04 ish and continues on.
I would agree, and after having read some of the thoughtful replies here, that there has been an evolution of the genre. More people are being exposed to MMORPG gaming and are liking it and my dissent and that of others like me is a small blip on the radar compared to the ipod MacDonalds consuming hordes of 2008.
Time will tell if us old timers are just burnt out and desensitized or if an era of quality gaming has come and gone.
Last week I did something I thought I would never ever do again. I resubbed to Ultima Online. Why you ask, would I do such an insane thing? The answer is simple: I wanted to go retro for a bit because I'm totally disillusioned with modern games. I don't necessairly think I've 'solved' my gaming boredom 'problems' per say but so far its been far more fun then I anticipated. Frankly, the new games just don't hold a candle to the feelings of the old days. Thats not to say that the old games presently running (necessairly) hold a candle to themselves either but I began to get curious and finally willing to part with 20 bucks just to see. Many forum posts, on these forums in particular, suggest a number of reasons why, in present times, there are so many gamers unable to rekindle that mmorpg gaming feeling of old. Some attribute desensitization, others suggest lackluster games that offer nothing truly new. One of the favorite cop-outs for the spoon fed, kill X fedex style games of modern times is the 'you'll never recreate that first kiss feeling' (which is true to some extend but not a valid defacto answer to cover all the aspects of the cookie cutter model that has been born from the first gen games). In fact I think there are many reasons and I don't think there is one smoking gun....I also understand the feelings or lack thereof to be entirely subjective. Yet, I know there is a big sub-community of people that feel the way I do. It lead me to an interesting question - what has really changed in 10 years of gaming? What new concepts have been added, and what has been retained from the old days? The short answer for me is the treadmill approach that everyone uses these days. Most modern games put you on a set of rails from level 1 on. Games like Everquest and Ultima Online had no point, you were on your own to forge your own. Most modern mmos with some bright exceptions, are entirely and absoultely task driven. The point, is the task. I understand that there are more people playing mmos' (a LOOTTTT more) today than 5 years ago. This in turn means a whole generation of mmo gamers that did not have CR's in EQ or have to live through the PK ganks in UO. So today's games are new to many, and in 10 years someone who is just starting to become a mmo gaming enthusaist now may very well have a post similar to this one. I think little has changed except things that don't benefit the consumer. Like the rest of our consumer society we, as consumers of these products are brainwashed into accepting lower quality standards. The developers haven't done much to advance the genre really and lean on core game concepts invented by their fathers coupled with concepts that make their life easier. I also think that there are a lot of newb developers out there that have been themselves brain washed into thinking 'this is gaming'. The modern mmorpg development template seems geared towards ease of implementation and less to do with making a good roleplaying game. Rather, content is serialized and the patterns emerge very quickly that we, as gamers call 'The Grind'. We almost need a new subset to define the games that the original mmo crowd fell in love with.
Flame me now - got my fire resists up.
Your post speaks volumes about what the older MMOs didn't have that current ones do. But having never played EQ or UO, I guess I don't understand what these MMO's had that current ones don't.
Sure, newer MMOs have a lot more quests and story driven content that haters on this site like to label as "linear". They have such content because the vast majority of MMO players of old found such content to be sorely lacking in the older games. How does adding such content make anyone's life "easier"?
What did those old games have that current ones don't?
____________________________________________ im to lazy too use grammar or punctuation good
Thats a valid question - so far the disucssion has been what the older games have in common with the newer games. Some of us old farts look at a decade and determine that not a whole lot has changed. Technology has improved and of course graphics but other then realtively minor enchancements to the core concepts nothing has changed.
Others look at the disucssion puzzled because they see nothing but innovation. Thats one of the compelling reasons to participate in a community such as this - there are many shades of gray.
Older games, even though they had less refined mechanics were far, far less task driven. I think if you took a game like EQ2 and took out the rat on a wheel feeling I get when I log on I'd love the game. But mmorpg gaming has become an activity that is done by being lead along to by game provided tasks.
In the old days the world was set up and the toys were place too and fro and it was up to you to move to the different parts of the sand box and pick up the toys you wanted to play with- the social encounters that resulted were somehow more legitimate.
Today task driven games dilute the social experience IMHO because playing the game is not necessiarly about your invented goals but rather an execution of the goals set for you. I guess to some degree there is less thought energy required for today's games, less challenge due to said refined mechanics.
That is not in, and of itself, a bad thing but not all of us want a dumbed down thoughtless experience......there is no game between task driven Wow and PvP centric Eve for example. Today its assumed if you want some type of achallenge and independance you must be a PvP player and participate in non consentual pvp combat.
Someone needs better market research. I think that there is a (semi) silent community of older games that represent more than a trickle that would flock to a game as such - take for example the potential Vanguard once had (of course that is all but spent now for reasons I hope no one elects to go into on this particular thread..
Last week I did something I thought I would never ever do again. I resubbed to Ultima Online. Why you ask, would I do such an insane thing? The answer is simple: I wanted to go retro for a bit because I'm totally disillusioned with modern games. I don't necessairly think I've 'solved' my gaming boredom 'problems' per say but so far its been far more fun then I anticipated. Frankly, the new games just don't hold a candle to the feelings of the old days. Thats not to say that the old games presently running (necessairly) hold a candle to themselves either but I began to get curious and finally willing to part with 20 bucks just to see. Many forum posts, on these forums in particular, suggest a number of reasons why, in present times, there are so many gamers unable to rekindle that mmorpg gaming feeling of old. Some attribute desensitization, others suggest lackluster games that offer nothing truly new. One of the favorite cop-outs for the spoon fed, kill X fedex style games of modern times is the 'you'll never recreate that first kiss feeling' (which is true to some extend but not a valid defacto answer to cover all the aspects of the cookie cutter model that has been born from the first gen games). In fact I think there are many reasons and I don't think there is one smoking gun....I also understand the feelings or lack thereof to be entirely subjective. Yet, I know there is a big sub-community of people that feel the way I do. It lead me to an interesting question - what has really changed in 10 years of gaming? What new concepts have been added, and what has been retained from the old days? The short answer for me is the treadmill approach that everyone uses these days. Most modern games put you on a set of rails from level 1 on. Games like Everquest and Ultima Online had no point, you were on your own to forge your own. Most modern mmos with some bright exceptions, are entirely and absoultely task driven. The point, is the task. I understand that there are more people playing mmos' (a LOOTTTT more) today than 5 years ago. This in turn means a whole generation of mmo gamers that did not have CR's in EQ or have to live through the PK ganks in UO. So today's games are new to many, and in 10 years someone who is just starting to become a mmo gaming enthusaist now may very well have a post similar to this one. I think little has changed except things that don't benefit the consumer. Like the rest of our consumer society we, as consumers of these products are brainwashed into accepting lower quality standards. The developers haven't done much to advance the genre really and lean on core game concepts invented by their fathers coupled with concepts that make their life easier. I also think that there are a lot of newb developers out there that have been themselves brain washed into thinking 'this is gaming'. The modern mmorpg development template seems geared towards ease of implementation and less to do with making a good roleplaying game. Rather, content is serialized and the patterns emerge very quickly that we, as gamers call 'The Grind'. We almost need a new subset to define the games that the original mmo crowd fell in love with.
Flame me now - got my fire resists up.
You simply fail to see how intricate and detailed MMOs are. You lack the intelligence to properly connect to this type of game.
10 years ago MMO developers had a goal of creating a living breathing virtual fantasy universe. Todays MMO developers have a goal of recreating single player RPG's in team enviroment. Call me crazy but. But even the modern developers goals have taken a huge step back
Crazy.
But, I agree.
My two cents on the subject. As a veteran of this genre, I think what I miss the most are the communities. Maybe I've closed a few doors when I joined the Secret Brotherhood of Roleplay, but I still feel like it has been harder to start conversation with other players.(CoX was a nice exception to this)
10 years ago MMO developers had a goal of creating a living breathing virtual fantasy universe. Todays MMO developers have a goal of recreating single player RPG's in team enviroment. Call me crazy but. But even the modern developers goals have taken a huge step back
Holy crap, you belong in the MMO genre because you live a fantasy world.
Evolving MMOs into "living breathing" virtual worlds was a stupid and completely unrealistic goal that was abandoned when developers realised that crap was only fit to represent MMO games in cartoons.
Players don't want virtual worlds they want video games that are actually fun to play. Developers goals havent taken a step backwards they have just gotten more realistic in what they can actually achieve in the time and budget alotted to them.
No one cares about your MMO "grandpa" stories. No one cares about how hard you had it back then but you liked it anyway. The MMO genre has taken great leaps forward but you are too jaded and cynical to see it.
10 years ago MMO developers had a goal of creating a living breathing virtual fantasy universe. Todays MMO developers have a goal of recreating single player RPG's in team enviroment. Call me crazy but. But even the modern developers goals have taken a huge step back
Holy crap, you belong in the MMO genre because you live a fantasy world.
Evolving MMOs into "living breathing" virtual worlds was a stupid and completely unrealistic goal that was abandoned when developers realised that crap was only fit to represent MMO games in cartoons.
Players don't want virtual worlds they want video games that are actually fun to play. Developers goals havent taken a step backwards they have just gotten more realistic in what they can actually achieve in the time and budget alotted to them.
No one cares about your MMO "grandpa" stories. No one cares about how hard you had it back then but you liked it anyway. The MMO genre has taken great leaps forward but you are too jaded and cynical to see it.
Yea, tell that to the developers of the GTA series. The one line youll find in every positive GTA review is "living, breathing world". And, unlike MMOs, the GTA series has actually evolved over the years. I loved the original GTA when I first played it, mostly because of the living world feel, and theyve drastically improved on this feature since then.
Hell, you can get more quality play time out of GTA then you can out of most of these sppon-fed, "I want easy fun, now" MMOs...
Yea, tell that to the developers of the GTA series. The one line youll find in every positive GTA review is "living, breathing world". And, unlike MMOs, the GTA series has actually evolved over the years. I loved the original GTA when I first played it, mostly because of the living world feel, and theyve drastically improved on this feature since then. Hell, you can get more quality play time out of GTA then you can out of most of these sppon-fed, "I want easy fun, now" MMOs...
"Living breathing" world in GTA?! Hahahahaha!!! You've got to be kidding. A game world that counts as "living" and "breathing" in a action game is MUCH different from a MMO one.
I've played GTA1, 2, London, 3, VC, SA and currently a couple hours into 4 and about the only thing that GTA has is a bunch of random people walking about that do nothing. The previous GTAs were even worse than 4 in this respect. The AI in GTA has always been dreadful, certainly not one of Rock Stars strengths.
Also, its not hard to create a game world that revolves around one central story anout about a hundred side quests. Wow, a hundred side quests, totally beats the several thoasand quests found in MMOs.
Yeah, GTA4 is the new hot game out but dont compare it to MMOs.
No, its not the "dynamic world" or "virtual world" that an MMO can present, but its much more of a "world" than what most MMOs have right now. The typical theme park style MMO has an utterly lifeless, static world. If you think thats the future of MMO gaming, then I really dont know what to tell you.
Last week I did something I thought I would never ever do again. I resubbed to Ultima Online. Why you ask, would I do such an insane thing? The answer is simple: I wanted to go retro for a bit because I'm totally disillusioned with modern games. I don't necessairly think I've 'solved' my gaming boredom 'problems' per say but so far its been far more fun then I anticipated. Frankly, the new games just don't hold a candle to the feelings of the old days. Thats not to say that the old games presently running (necessairly) hold a candle to themselves either but I began to get curious and finally willing to part with 20 bucks just to see. Many forum posts, on these forums in particular, suggest a number of reasons why, in present times, there are so many gamers unable to rekindle that mmorpg gaming feeling of old. Some attribute desensitization, others suggest lackluster games that offer nothing truly new. One of the favorite cop-outs for the spoon fed, kill X fedex style games of modern times is the 'you'll never recreate that first kiss feeling' (which is true to some extend but not a valid defacto answer to cover all the aspects of the cookie cutter model that has been born from the first gen games). In fact I think there are many reasons and I don't think there is one smoking gun....I also understand the feelings or lack thereof to be entirely subjective. Yet, I know there is a big sub-community of people that feel the way I do. It lead me to an interesting question - what has really changed in 10 years of gaming? What new concepts have been added, and what has been retained from the old days? The short answer for me is the treadmill approach that everyone uses these days. Most modern games put you on a set of rails from level 1 on. Games like Everquest and Ultima Online had no point, you were on your own to forge your own. Most modern mmos with some bright exceptions, are entirely and absoultely task driven. The point, is the task. I understand that there are more people playing mmos' (a LOOTTTT more) today than 5 years ago. This in turn means a whole generation of mmo gamers that did not have CR's in EQ or have to live through the PK ganks in UO. So today's games are new to many, and in 10 years someone who is just starting to become a mmo gaming enthusaist now may very well have a post similar to this one. I think little has changed except things that don't benefit the consumer. Like the rest of our consumer society we, as consumers of these products are brainwashed into accepting lower quality standards. The developers haven't done much to advance the genre really and lean on core game concepts invented by their fathers coupled with concepts that make their life easier. I also think that there are a lot of newb developers out there that have been themselves brain washed into thinking 'this is gaming'. The modern mmorpg development template seems geared towards ease of implementation and less to do with making a good roleplaying game. Rather, content is serialized and the patterns emerge very quickly that we, as gamers call 'The Grind'. We almost need a new subset to define the games that the original mmo crowd fell in love with.
Flame me now - got my fire resists up.
I agree! Either this Raph Koster, or his long lost twin.
10 years ago MMO developers had a goal of creating a living breathing virtual fantasy universe. Todays MMO developers have a goal of recreating single player RPG's in team enviroment. Call me crazy but. But even the modern developers goals have taken a huge step back
Just to play devil advocate. What exactly was "living and breathing world" about EQ?
In War - Victory. In Peace - Vigilance. In Death - Sacrifice.
In the last 10 years of MMO gaming we have came from one boring grind to another, with game companies' success dependant on how long they can disguise the grind or how big a carrot they can put on the end of the stick if players are willing to suffer through the grind.
Games that differ from this pattern attract enough people to keep them going, and in some cases (eg. EVE) going strong, but they never overtake WoW - despite the game being about as fun as sticking pins through your eyes, while banging your head against a wall with wet paint on it that you are watching dry.
Why is WoW so popular? They expanded on an already popular series, dumbed down the complexities present in other MMOs and hit the market right when people were getting sick of EQ, UO etc.
The playerbase grew to a point where WoW was a safe bet if you are an MMO player - you know you will never be alone in WoW and you know that the company are going to continue to update the game.
Where will MMO gaming go in another 10 years? I hope virtual reality, but ignoring that, probably to whatever MMO Blizzard release next - no matter how long the grind is.
It's kinda hard to go anywhere when you're chained to a treadmill.... BTW, UO is just as much of a treadmill as anything else out there. The difference is that you get more of a choice between treadmills.
In a way, thats true. However, I think the big difference with a game like UO is that theres MUCH more to the game than just the combat ladder.
Game companies are doing quite well selling us a product they used to provide us for free.
Picture your favorite RPG and imagine you could export your single player toon into multiuser dungeon or battleground; that is idea that drives the modern day MMOG, and it is a thing we once played for free - now we pay 15 dollars a month for it.
If these independants were smart they would not bother making a traditional MMORPG and sell us on the idea of spending money to be the focus of our own world that goes off to conquer or explore in multiuser dungeons sorta like guildwars but with a underlying single player option and when we return to our own singleplayer world the NPCs treat us with sympathy if we failed and joyous cheers if we suceeded. It would be a Single-Player Multi-Player Online/Offline Role Playing Game or a SMORPG.
They should just drop the veil because I know it would be a hit.
"The liberties and resulting economic prosperity that YOU take for granted were granted by those "dead guys"
Largely, nothing has changed in respect to ideas in regards to MMOs. Most started out as treadmill based and never left that mold. UO may seem like a sandbox, but largely it had live events in place of static quests, which was one of its main draws (you could participate in these live events and have a blast or not...) to that game other than the FFA PVP. The only other title that barely attempted to make a sandbox game was Starwars Galaxies. It had all the basic functions of one, but it was broken and empty of content that other players wanted as well (quests and other PVE 'content'). So, they got their wish, and got their treadmill back. In short, the decade of MMOs has been a series of battles between consumers who do want a treadmill and consumers (and developers) who do not.
This conflict between the treadmillers and the non-treadmillers will probably not get resolved by trying to cater to both in the same title. In fact, I believe there will be a trend toward both sorts of games, but one will be a smaller market share in comparison to the other. I believe treadmill games will have a larger market share than non-treadmill games for at least two decades, then it will decline. The reason I suspect it will decline is probably too complex to address fully, but I will simply state that it will involve several factors in relation to technology, social reaction to it, and the ultimate synthesis of man and 'his' machines.
In the end, any bickering about it now without any attempt by anyone here, consumer or coder, is pointless. And it only serves to aggravate our respective nerves.
Comments
we had a great game that was ahead of it's time.
that game was made by a man who is the guru of mmo's and even told ea what they did wrong with uo.
that game is star wars galaxies.
and it was stolen from us vets by sony online. it was stolen and held hostage by two systems one a so called combat upgrade that nerfed the combat system. and then soe started to give into the whiners and nerf jedi ever month. and jedi was one of the best things about swg, but soe caved in to people who wanted to a i win button.
and then in winter of 2005 the game was held hostage by a system called the nge.
the nge turned what was once the greatest mmo made into a shell. it's so bad tiggs who ran the swg forums got fired for defending the players and telling soe to roll the game back. the game went from 250k players down to under 10k as today.
if you want a game that was fun and great then help us the swg vets reclaim the pre-cu system.
They took away your freedom to basically dumb the game down and they destroyed it. I wish other game companies would learn from this lesson, rather than trying to be too easy like a WoW clone. Not knowing what to do is an adventure. Following glowing exclamation points around is dull.
Ultima Online was an unplayable fiasco largely driven to obscurity by player killers, and WoW is a smooth-running game with much more content and far better rules and mechanics. EQ1 was far better than UO, and WoW is far better than EQ1.
Also, now we have innovative games like CoX. MMO's have come a very long way since their fringe beginnings.
Hmm, the problem with your point is equating sandbox games with lack of content and rampant freeform PKing. This was so in the beginning but things changed - EQ had harsh death penalties but no one will now complain that linear, quest-driven games suck because they must have harsh death penalties. For one, the sandbox games don't have to be like that (you can have freeform without PKing and with lots of dev-made content) and second, I believe that a true next-gen MMORPG won't be either truly "sandbox" or " linear" but something else... what exactly I don't know but I can speculate from the inherent technological qualities of the genre.
To make my point with an example - Second Life. The MOST sandbox game out there, extremely popular and no player killing at all. I'm not saying that Second Life is the way to go because it is not a proper RPG, I'm just pointing at a novel way at looking at computer game design - giving players the tools to create content instead of raw content itself.
Today it is almost unthinkable to publish a FPS or RTS or almost any of the top genres without giving the players tools to make their own maps, mods etc. Why this isn't so in MMORPGs which are the genre most liable to profit from this model - both because of their social aspect and the revenue model which works over time? It's been proven that giving the players means to actually tinker with the game goes a long way towards making the game a "hobby" instead of one-off entertainment as well as providing a flow of fresh content which is completely cost-free for the devs. This immensely increases the lifetime of a game - the main irony is that this is now a standard in non-online games and virtually unknown/unthinkable in MMORPGs whose revenue directly depends on longevity.
I know this sounds crazy to implement in a competetive environment such as your typical fantasy MMORPG but imho this is something to think about. Players usually go crazy over player housing for example, spending huge amounts of time working on it and it has no bearing on the game "proper" itself. I'm getting whimsical at this point but does anyone remember an ancient game "Dungeon Keeper", a great hit a loong time ago? Here you had your dungeon-crawler turned on it's head - this was a "dungeon management simulator". You were a fantasy bad guy digging out and managing your own dungeon to withstand attacks from various pesky heroes. Something like this may conceivably be implemented in a MMORPG environment - one player creates a dungeon using a limited set of resources and elements while the other players attempt to rob it.
The second interesting idea is introducing a world-simulator AI to provide the players with an ever-changing global context. Imagine a game of Civilization with players being individuals in a world with ever-changing borders, wars between nations, technological advances etc... This idea (although in a limited fashion atm) has been slowly making appearance in some new games - Tabula Rasa and future Aion which all feature an NPC faction which unpredictably influences the world-state. Another take on it is in Age of Conan where player owned cities will compete with aggressive AI-driven ones, giving you a constant stream of unpredictable (and thus more entertaining) game events.
There are many many similar and very interesting, non-standard and already existing concepts and ideas which might boost the genre immensely, both in terms of variety and longevity. However, it seems that for now we're stuck with "grind xp for levels in a static world and then do some end game until you're bored stiff" formula which is ported directly from single-player rpgs. Imo MMORPGs should finally move from this unnatural model.
MMOS 10 years before _
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Technically speaking MMO's have come a long way baby. In 10 years they basically went from little colored blobs to stunning animated art. UI's and stability have also improved for the most part a hundred times over.
Where many of us have the issue isn't the technical changes but the mechanical ones. Rule sets have gotten easier and level design is on the kindergarden level. Writer talent is almost non-existant for the mostpart making most content and lore a complete waste as its hardly integrated into the game at all.
So while MMOs are much prettier to look at today, they are much less challenging and have far less depth then the older ones. Its a trade off I guess.
As MMO companies continue to focus on grapics (this game genre is totally unsuited to be leading the way in the graphics dept anyway) something gets sacrificed and that ends up being the actual gameworlds and rulesets. At least everything looks awesome when you get sent out to kill 10 rats.
Looks - 10 years ago
Today
Its going to be fun to see where this genre goes in the next 10 years. Games like LotRs are not that bad to play and do create a level of visual immersion that frankly was not possible 10 years ago.
What everyone moans about (myself included) is it plays the same as most other recent releases. If this game had released 10 years ago as is, it would have stunned the world.
No doubt MMOs will continue to evolve and change.
Fresh ideas will eventually take root and the gameplay will catch up to the graphics.
10 Years ago the Market, MMO's, PC Games, Consoles and even handhelds was just not the same as todays market...
See back in 1998 when Ultima Online came out it was for the most part 'new' again for the most part... Granted they did have some semi MMO's before UO. SSI's Gold Box Neverwinter Nights on AOL, Red Dragon on some BBS's, Dark Sun Online... UO however was a first in my eyes... I mean Neverwinter Nights isn't something people knew off the top of their head. Dark Sun Online, same deal... The idea of running just UO, having the Player pay $10 dollars a month and running it with whatever ISP he or she wanted was not a bad one....
Still 10 years ago the whole gaming market just wasn't the same... We had just moved into going with Cd's over Floppy Disks and Cartridges. PC Games had just moved out of the days of the big games being turn based strategy and role playing games, along with Flight Sims and semi-3d games. Into well a new market, Real Time Strategy games like Command and Conquer and Warcraft, Real Time RPG's like Diablo or Baldur's Gate. True 3d games like Jedi Knight, Quake and Half-Life... Flight Sims just didn't do 'as well' as they did years ago. Even Consoles and Handhelds changed, gone was Nintendo being the king of consoles, Sony had taken over. Nintendo did still control the handheld market tho...
Dare I say this but I see 1998 till the end of 2001 as the new Golden Age of Gaming...
See back then Video Games where still 'nerdy' if you will... Oh granted you had some hit titles selling like mad like the Sims, Half-Life, Pokemon (yes I have to put that down...) and Final Fantasy 7, along with the other norm games like Madden Football and the like... Still gaming wasn't mainstream and MMO's, well lets face it, back then UO and later on EQ were 'new' for the times...
Now I kinda have a soft spot for those days... I mean soooo many games showed off new things! Half-Life showed that you could have a story driven FPS title with almost 'real' combat. Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament showed really good online play. Homeworld had this great story driven RTS game that just felt like a really good Sci-Fi show or movie, System Shock 2... Well dear god I can go on about System Shock 2... Fallout and other games like Baldur's Gate would bring in good actors to do voice over work... Hell Star Trek Voyager:Elite Force had a storyline that blew the show away!
So why do I think things started to change in 2001? Around the start of 2002?
Maybe it was ummm things that happened that I won't get into... But more and more people started to get into gaming... But tell the truth the change I saw was with my real life friends... Before some of them played Video Games now and then. Then came the Xbox and Halo and ya know I still remember the night where my friend Matt called me, Matt has been a 'cool guy' in my books... Still he calls me up saying "Dude!!! Come over!!! We are doing 16 person Halo!!!!" I showed up and saw friends of mine get sooooo into Halo! It was insane! It blew my mind! It made me think...
Are Video Games becoming mainstream? Are friends of mine who used to say "Oh Gaming is for nerds!" now turning over a new leaf and becoming Gamers? Believe it or not alot of them did, and ya know the market as I saw it started to change...
Started with UO, in 1998 UO was a 'hardcore' game if you will. Gaining skills was hard, going outside a town got you killed by a gang of Player Killers most of the time. By the end of 2001 UO wasn't the same game, it was much more easy to get into. The Player Killers ended up being a thing of the past, but something we'll get into in a bit. Friends of mine started to sign up for UO or EQ. Most of them enjoyed the game, most of whom just wanted something to enjoy and have fun with. Then the new games started to get 'dumbed down' a bit... Command and Conquer Red Alert 2 was much more easy then the first Command and Conquer. Freelancer, a game I enjoyed to death was one of the most dumbed down Space Shooters ever! Everything was mouse driven in the game!
It was really in 2004 when I saw how much gaming had changed....
Maybe it was going and getting a copy of Halo 2 and seeing a good sized line for it... Maybe it was seeing my friends get more and more into MMO's. Maybe it was seeing UO turn more into an Everquest like game, rather then Raph Koster's and Richard Garriots RP Dream World... I think the big thing was Doom 3, now I ran out and got my copy of Doom 3 when it came out. I remember the reviews saying it was great, then almost a month later the backlash started.... "Doom 3 uses cheap tactics. Doing headshots doesn't do anything. Doom 3 SUCKS!" Here was a game that by god I enjoyed and people just tore it a new one....
See something I saw on my time in UO came to mind... Trammel in 2000, when UO went and for the most part took out Player Killing about two years after it came out. New people did come in, however if you looked at the forums, you would think it was the worst game ever. People screaming for Classic Servers and or Rollbacks to the old game. People talking about how the game should die rather then have that change... Most of the people screaming where Player Killers, but the big thing I saw back then was this... Most of them where Hardcore UO Players...
What we have now is a new market, the 8 year olds that played Pokemon back in 1998 are now playing Mass Effect and other games. We have more and more people coming into gaming, be it with the new systems like the Wii, Xbox 360 or PS3. We have games like Rainbow 6 going from a slow moving 'real' FPS to more of an Action Driven game that plays like 24 with Rainbow 6:Vegas. RPG's like Mass Effect and BioShock bring more of a real time FPS like Combat System into the game. Halo 2 and 3 and even Call of Duty 2, 3 and 4 throwing out the old heath bar system, in place of the active heath system of hide and heal.
And yes MMO's have changed as well... The big games are much more easy to play and have a shorter learning curve then the older UO like games... Still the thing is people are screaming about everything...
What we now have is a 'hardcore' vs 'casual' war if you will... Hit the SWG Forums, or the Fallout 3 Forums and see what I mean... We have the hardcore players of those games, screaming about changes too them. Much like UO had back in 2000... What those Players I feel are screaming are "Why are you changing the game! Dumbing it down when you have us!"
As much as some of you will hate to hear it, things change. And gaming has changed... It's not 1998 anymore with the only way to play online is on a PC. MMO's are not going to be the hardcore, insanely hard titles like UO and EQ of the past. Rather they have to move ahead and those games have to be more.... How can I put this... Newbie and Casual Friendly...
We have come far, not just with MMORPG's but gaming as a whole. Last year showed it, more and more people are going out and gaming. Be it on a Wii, 360, PS3 or PC. More people are getting into MMORPG's and over time the games will change, it won't be the hardcore friendly games of the past. But more open to all rather then some...
As an older gamer I will look back at the days of staying up late to blast TIE Fighters in X-Wing, or try to make it to Level 7 in Ultima Underworld.. But I for one do want to see more people get into gaming and see gaming grow, along with MMORPG's...
Some of you hold on to the notion that we're just on the brink of an explosion of mmorpg good ness and we're just in a rough patch that started in 2003-04 ish and continues on.
I would agree, and after having read some of the thoughtful replies here, that there has been an evolution of the genre. More people are being exposed to MMORPG gaming and are liking it and my dissent and that of others like me is a small blip on the radar compared to the ipod MacDonalds consuming hordes of 2008.
Time will tell if us old timers are just burnt out and desensitized or if an era of quality gaming has come and gone.
Your post speaks volumes about what the older MMOs didn't have that current ones do. But having never played EQ or UO, I guess I don't understand what these MMO's had that current ones don't.
Sure, newer MMOs have a lot more quests and story driven content that haters on this site like to label as "linear". They have such content because the vast majority of MMO players of old found such content to be sorely lacking in the older games. How does adding such content make anyone's life "easier"?
What did those old games have that current ones don't?
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im to lazy too use grammar or punctuation good
Thats a valid question - so far the disucssion has been what the older games have in common with the newer games. Some of us old farts look at a decade and determine that not a whole lot has changed. Technology has improved and of course graphics but other then realtively minor enchancements to the core concepts nothing has changed.
Others look at the disucssion puzzled because they see nothing but innovation. Thats one of the compelling reasons to participate in a community such as this - there are many shades of gray.
Older games, even though they had less refined mechanics were far, far less task driven. I think if you took a game like EQ2 and took out the rat on a wheel feeling I get when I log on I'd love the game. But mmorpg gaming has become an activity that is done by being lead along to by game provided tasks.
In the old days the world was set up and the toys were place too and fro and it was up to you to move to the different parts of the sand box and pick up the toys you wanted to play with- the social encounters that resulted were somehow more legitimate.
Today task driven games dilute the social experience IMHO because playing the game is not necessiarly about your invented goals but rather an execution of the goals set for you. I guess to some degree there is less thought energy required for today's games, less challenge due to said refined mechanics.
That is not in, and of itself, a bad thing but not all of us want a dumbed down thoughtless experience......there is no game between task driven Wow and PvP centric Eve for example. Today its assumed if you want some type of achallenge and independance you must be a PvP player and participate in non consentual pvp combat.
Someone needs better market research. I think that there is a (semi) silent community of older games that represent more than a trickle that would flock to a game as such - take for example the potential Vanguard once had (of course that is all but spent now for reasons I hope no one elects to go into on this particular thread..
10 years ago MMO developers had a goal of creating a living breathing virtual fantasy universe.
Todays MMO developers have a goal of recreating single player RPG's in team enviroment.
Call me crazy but.
But even the modern developers goals have taken a huge step back
You simply fail to see how intricate and detailed MMOs are. You lack the intelligence to properly connect to this type of game.
We have gone very far backwards.
Crazy.
But, I agree.
My two cents on the subject. As a veteran of this genre, I think what I miss the most are the communities. Maybe I've closed a few doors when I joined the Secret Brotherhood of Roleplay, but I still feel like it has been harder to start conversation with other players.(CoX was a nice exception to this)
The Anti Social Gamer
Evolving MMOs into "living breathing" virtual worlds was a stupid and completely unrealistic goal that was abandoned when developers realised that crap was only fit to represent MMO games in cartoons.
Players don't want virtual worlds they want video games that are actually fun to play. Developers goals havent taken a step backwards they have just gotten more realistic in what they can actually achieve in the time and budget alotted to them.
No one cares about your MMO "grandpa" stories. No one cares about how hard you had it back then but you liked it anyway. The MMO genre has taken great leaps forward but you are too jaded and cynical to see it.
Evolving MMOs into "living breathing" virtual worlds was a stupid and completely unrealistic goal that was abandoned when developers realised that crap was only fit to represent MMO games in cartoons.
Players don't want virtual worlds they want video games that are actually fun to play. Developers goals havent taken a step backwards they have just gotten more realistic in what they can actually achieve in the time and budget alotted to them.
No one cares about your MMO "grandpa" stories. No one cares about how hard you had it back then but you liked it anyway. The MMO genre has taken great leaps forward but you are too jaded and cynical to see it.
Yea, tell that to the developers of the GTA series. The one line youll find in every positive GTA review is "living, breathing world". And, unlike MMOs, the GTA series has actually evolved over the years. I loved the original GTA when I first played it, mostly because of the living world feel, and theyve drastically improved on this feature since then.
Hell, you can get more quality play time out of GTA then you can out of most of these sppon-fed, "I want easy fun, now" MMOs...
I've played GTA1, 2, London, 3, VC, SA and currently a couple hours into 4 and about the only thing that GTA has is a bunch of random people walking about that do nothing. The previous GTAs were even worse than 4 in this respect. The AI in GTA has always been dreadful, certainly not one of Rock Stars strengths.
Also, its not hard to create a game world that revolves around one central story anout about a hundred side quests. Wow, a hundred side quests, totally beats the several thoasand quests found in MMOs.
Yeah, GTA4 is the new hot game out but dont compare it to MMOs.
No, its not the "dynamic world" or "virtual world" that an MMO can present, but its much more of a "world" than what most MMOs have right now. The typical theme park style MMO has an utterly lifeless, static world. If you think thats the future of MMO gaming, then I really dont know what to tell you.
I agree! Either this Raph Koster, or his long lost twin.
Just to play devil advocate. What exactly was "living and breathing world" about EQ?
In War - Victory.
In Peace - Vigilance.
In Death - Sacrifice.
In the last 10 years of MMO gaming we have came from one boring grind to another, with game companies' success dependant on how long they can disguise the grind or how big a carrot they can put on the end of the stick if players are willing to suffer through the grind.
Games that differ from this pattern attract enough people to keep them going, and in some cases (eg. EVE) going strong, but they never overtake WoW - despite the game being about as fun as sticking pins through your eyes, while banging your head against a wall with wet paint on it that you are watching dry.
Why is WoW so popular? They expanded on an already popular series, dumbed down the complexities present in other MMOs and hit the market right when people were getting sick of EQ, UO etc.
The playerbase grew to a point where WoW was a safe bet if you are an MMO player - you know you will never be alone in WoW and you know that the company are going to continue to update the game.
Where will MMO gaming go in another 10 years? I hope virtual reality, but ignoring that, probably to whatever MMO Blizzard release next - no matter how long the grind is.
It's kinda hard to go anywhere when you're chained to a treadmill....
BTW, UO is just as much of a treadmill as anything else out there. The difference is that you get more of a choice between treadmills.
In a way, thats true. However, I think the big difference with a game like UO is that theres MUCH more to the game than just the combat ladder.
Game companies are doing quite well selling us a product they used to provide us for free.
Picture your favorite RPG and imagine you could export your single player toon into multiuser dungeon or battleground; that is idea that drives the modern day MMOG, and it is a thing we once played for free - now we pay 15 dollars a month for it.
If these independants were smart they would not bother making a traditional MMORPG and sell us on the idea of spending money to be the focus of our own world that goes off to conquer or explore in multiuser dungeons sorta like guildwars but with a underlying single player option and when we return to our own singleplayer world the NPCs treat us with sympathy if we failed and joyous cheers if we suceeded. It would be a Single-Player Multi-Player Online/Offline Role Playing Game or a SMORPG.
They should just drop the veil because I know it would be a hit.
"The liberties and resulting economic prosperity that YOU take for granted were granted by those "dead guys"
Largely, nothing has changed in respect to ideas in regards to MMOs. Most started out as treadmill based and never left that mold. UO may seem like a sandbox, but largely it had live events in place of static quests, which was one of its main draws (you could participate in these live events and have a blast or not...) to that game other than the FFA PVP. The only other title that barely attempted to make a sandbox game was Starwars Galaxies. It had all the basic functions of one, but it was broken and empty of content that other players wanted as well (quests and other PVE 'content'). So, they got their wish, and got their treadmill back. In short, the decade of MMOs has been a series of battles between consumers who do want a treadmill and consumers (and developers) who do not.
This conflict between the treadmillers and the non-treadmillers will probably not get resolved by trying to cater to both in the same title. In fact, I believe there will be a trend toward both sorts of games, but one will be a smaller market share in comparison to the other. I believe treadmill games will have a larger market share than non-treadmill games for at least two decades, then it will decline. The reason I suspect it will decline is probably too complex to address fully, but I will simply state that it will involve several factors in relation to technology, social reaction to it, and the ultimate synthesis of man and 'his' machines.
In the end, any bickering about it now without any attempt by anyone here, consumer or coder, is pointless. And it only serves to aggravate our respective nerves.
-- Brede