LOTRO was a let-down after Moria's release for me. I waited for LOTRO release for years and was in open beta asap. Sadly, LOTRO for me was a total waste of time other then the great kinship I got to be part of.
If the biggest complaint you can find with loTRO is that it is a static world you realize you just described every MMORPG that has ever existed or is in development. Possible exception might be Second Life and I don't think that really qualifies as a game. Even Eve which is the closest a game has come to a virtual world has the same missions for every player all ships are essentually the same and the same systems are there from week to week withlittle change. The marke tis quite dynamic though and that is cool.
The original SWG tried but missed by a mile and a half and was pretty much epic fail in retrospect. It's resources were dynamic but that was all really. The player cities were cool till they rtuned into player ghettos.
If the biggest complaint you can find with loTRO is that it is a static world you realize you just described every MMORPG that has ever existed or is in development. Possible exception might be Second Life and I don't think that really qualifies as a game. Even Eve which is the closest a game has come to a virtual world has the same missions for every player all ships are essentually the same and the same systems are there from week to week withlittle change. The marke tis quite dynamic though and that is cool. The original SWG tried but missed by a mile and a half and was pretty much epic fail in retrospect. It's resources were dynamic but that was all really. The player cities were cool till they rtuned into player ghettos.
If the only defence for your beloved mmo is that others have the same flaws then you just agreed with my statement that all the crap currently on the market is not "next generation" mmo.
In my humble opinion specially The Lord of the Rings should have made an exception and not be a market clone. That is my opinion and that is why i find it was a wasted license. And while i do agree with your summary that all MMO's are more or less static, The Lord of the Rings encouraged that impression with invisible walls everywhere. In no other MMO have i felt so caged in and forced to be where the game wants me to be at a certain level and klick exactly the buttons in exactly the sequence the coders prepared them for. Before the current LOTRO could actually dream of becomming dynamic it would need to become open first.
If the only defence for your beloved mmo is that others have the same flaws then you just agreed with my statement that all the crap currently on the market is not "next generation" mmo.
Nothing to defend here. Your saying LoTRO sucks because it has a static world is like saying a car sucks because it has 4 wheels and cannot magically teleport you to your destination. You will never see what you are demanding to see so I think it is time for you to find a new hobby
If the only defence for your beloved mmo is that others have the same flaws then you just agreed with my statement that all the crap currently on the market is not "next generation" mmo. In my humble opinion specially The Lord of the Rings should have made an exception and not be a market clone. That is my opinion and that is why i find it was a wasted license. And while i do agree with your summary that all MMO's are more or less static, The Lord of the Rings encouraged that impression with invisible walls everywhere. In no other MMO have i felt so caged in and forced to be where the game wants me to be at a certain level and klick exactly the buttons in exactly the sequence the coders prepared them for. Before the current LOTRO could actually dream of becomming dynamic it would need to become open first.
Have you even played LOTRO? Is this a joke.... are we getting "punk'd? I am going to conclude from your post that if you have played your experience was limited and most likely confined to a free trial version, IMVHO.
If the only defence for your beloved mmo is that others have the same flaws then you just agreed with my statement that all the crap currently on the market is not "next generation" mmo.
Nothing to defend here. Your saying LoTRO sucks because it has a static world is like saying a car sucks because it has 4 wheels and cannot magically teleport you to your destination. You will never see what you are demanding to see so I think it is time for you to find a new hobby
The same thing was said 120 years ago about having horse drawn carriages without horses and uh they invented cars. The same thing was said about maps that automatically tell you the route while driving and now we have GPS. And probably the same was said about Online games where more than 4 people can share the same game experience at the same time like 30 years ago. What you are saying is that the current state of developement is the end of the road and will not improve to more dynamic realistic and open worlds.
If the only defence for your beloved mmo is that others have the same flaws then you just agreed with my statement that all the crap currently on the market is not "next generation" mmo. In my humble opinion specially The Lord of the Rings should have made an exception and not be a market clone. That is my opinion and that is why i find it was a wasted license. And while i do agree with your summary that all MMO's are more or less static, The Lord of the Rings encouraged that impression with invisible walls everywhere. In no other MMO have i felt so caged in and forced to be where the game wants me to be at a certain level and klick exactly the buttons in exactly the sequence the coders prepared them for. Before the current LOTRO could actually dream of becomming dynamic it would need to become open first.
Have you even played LOTRO? Is this a joke.... are we getting "punk'd? I am going to conclude from your post that if you have played your experience was limited and most likely confined to a free trial version, IMVHO.
i bored myself to like 38 or 39 with a burglar and to like 15 with a minstrell. At the end i logged in to chat with the kin and after a while i found it easier to just log into a normal internet chat for that experience. I jumped that fence at the starting sequence to hit the dark knight but couldnt and dozens of other examples like that. Always only exactly one thing to do. No alternatives.
Of course i missed a couple of the miniraids (24 people is a miniraid for me, and for sure not epic or mmoish) but i saw orcs respawn where i killed them 60 seconds before like in games that have their 10th aniversary just now. What a progress. So maybe it is not me who has not played enough LOTRO but maybe you who has not seen or at least imagined MORE than LOTRO.
gotta love it when the kids toss around such esoteric terms such as a dynamic world and next gen game . That makes think they sound like like a big time dev, but in reality it just shows how ignorant they are.
You will never ever see a dynamic world in a MMO simply because it is a MMO. So you kill the orcs, guess what Sherlock, you think that guy right behind you might like to to kill some orcs too? You just finished the ring quest, Good for you Frodozon, I guess those other 499,999 players have just wasted their time because you got to the finish before they did. Ok all you players the games over now, ring was destroyed, everyone log off so we can shut the servers down.
Jesus kids, get a brain. No one in the business can even define next gen MMO, all that is is a buzzword tossed around by shyster developers who are conning you into worshipping at the alter of their own persoanl dream of fortune and fame.. No one would recognize a next gen MMO if one urinated on their leg,
LoTRO. WoW, AOC, the EQ brothers, DAOC, WAR etc etc are all basically DIKU combat muds, what you think you want is a social mud and there already is a huge one called 2nd life , so run on over there and see how you like it.
I am messing with Eve right now and it has a nice universe, but at the center of all the complexity is still a very very static world. The same agents give the same quests to everyone, just like every popular MMO in existence and all the ones in development.
If the only defence for your beloved mmo is that others have the same flaws then you just agreed with my statement that all the crap currently on the market is not "next generation" mmo. In my humble opinion specially The Lord of the Rings should have made an exception and not be a market clone. That is my opinion and that is why i find it was a wasted license. And while i do agree with your summary that all MMO's are more or less static, The Lord of the Rings encouraged that impression with invisible walls everywhere. In no other MMO have i felt so caged in and forced to be where the game wants me to be at a certain level and klick exactly the buttons in exactly the sequence the coders prepared them for. Before the current LOTRO could actually dream of becomming dynamic it would need to become open first.
Have you even played LOTRO? Is this a joke.... are we getting "punk'd? I am going to conclude from your post that if you have played your experience was limited and most likely confined to a free trial version, IMVHO.
i bored myself to like 38 or 39 with a burglar and to like 15 with a minstrell. At the end i logged in to chat with the kin and after a while i found it easier to just log into a normal internet chat for that experience. I jumped that fence at the starting sequence to hit the dark knight but couldnt and dozens of other examples like that. Always only exactly one thing to do. No alternatives.
Of course i missed a couple of the miniraids (24 people is a miniraid for me, and for sure not epic or mmoish) but i saw orcs respawn where i killed them 60 seconds before like in games that have their 10th aniversary just now. What a progress. So maybe it is not me who has not played enough LOTRO but maybe you who has not seen or at least imagined MORE than LOTRO.
I was trying to formulate a response, but as I re-read your post I realise you really haven't said anything.... live well you crazy dreamer
You will never ever see a dynamic world in a MMO simply because it is a MMO. So you kill the orcs, guess what Sherlock, you think that guy right behind you might like to to kill some orcs too? You just finished the ring quest, Good for you Frodozon, I guess those other 499,999 players have just wasted their time because you got to the finish before they did. Ok all you players the games over now, ring was destroyed, everyone log off so we can shut the servers down. ... LoTRO. WoW, AOC, the EQ brothers, DAOC, WAR etc etc are all basically DIKU combat muds, what you think you want is a social mud and there already is a huge one called 2nd life , so run on over there and see how you like it.
You said it brother! At the end of any day they all are just a games limited by the tech availible and while I am hopeful that MMO will continue to evolve it is a process that takes time; as I see it Devs have really, for the most part, given the players what they have wanted visually stunning worlds with improved charater modeling. Eye candy sells bottom line. I beleive that when there is a shift from the play base majority we will see a shift in Dev development and product. IMVHO
that is why i so rarely post on these boards at all, once someone steps up and critisises the precious product the insults begin. subtle or direct.
anyway, i do not really count myself a dev altho i do hold a couple of world wide patents - that just comes when you are an engineer. What i find laughable is the argument that what we currently get is the max possible.
No it is industrialised world cloning, with standart zones and standart core quests. Only very little has changed in the past 10 years and that is a shame because the genre had alot more potential back in 1999. For me there is one big mistake in the latest MMOs and most that are in developement.
They are designed so that a casual solo gamer will see 90%+ of the content.
If i wanted a game like that i would play single player offline games. What i want from an MMO is the group experience where at least as a large group you can change the world for a while (dynamic). TR tried that in a really bad attempt but basically it was the right idea just poorly finished. WAR offers something similar with their public quest system (which is nice, if you have a publicity for it).
The attempts for more dynamic worlds are there in the new games, they are shy and you can actually imagine the discussions between the visionaries and the investors.
Visionary: "Lets put 150 houers into adding this dynamic quest circle".
Investor: "Nah, thats 15000$ plus the debugging and testing - WOW does not need that to be successful either".
Visionary: "But we want to be different from WOW!"
Investor: "Yeah but not success wise".
Visionary: "sigh..."
Anyway, as this thread is progressing into a fanboy-beat-me-up game - i am out, cu in future threads where people wonder why static worlds are so boring.
nah Bursche you are just spouting a bunch of words, prove to me how I am wrong , lay out a outline of exactly what you mean by a dynamic MMO and a definition of what you would consider a next generation MMO. Until then you are just regurgitating buzzwords trying to look like you are somehow superior. Any fool can take a hammer and tear something apart but it takes skill to build something. heres a chance to show what kind of a builder you are.
nah Bursche you are just spouting a bunch of words, prove to me how I am wrong , lay out a outline of exactly what you mean by a dynamic MMO and a definition of what you would consider a next generation MMO. Until then you are just regurgitating buzzwords trying to look like you are somehow superior. Any fool can take a hammer and tear something apart but it takes skill to build something. heres a chance to show what kind of a builder you are.
nice try to bait me - however you wont fool me into such a discussion. The problem with people like you is that you can not imagine what is not right in front of you. I did a test many months back, i described a new idea to the official forums of LOTRO and got flamed down like no tomorrow - so what i did was i spent 6 houers to draw the buttons and blent them into the lotro setting, it actually looked very pro - guess what: the same people (who wrote very similar to your style) that flamed the idea a week before cheered and said, damn when do they bring this live? They where quite disappointed when they noticed it wasnt dev preview pics but player drawn pics.
In 20 years of engineering i learned that for most people you need a functional sample before they actually understand what you are talking about. Since my coding knowledge is rather little i cannot deliver such a sample.
However you may wish to look at some of the older (single player) games (1985-1995) where quests had alternative routes, with player influenced outcomes.
In LOTRO it always was like "so you let me watch the intro and travel the 3D world, when can i play?, no please not another intro i wanna play!"
I wish you fun in LOTRO, you dont deserve a better game since you cant imagine a better game.
nah Bursche you are just spouting a bunch of words, prove to me how I am wrong , lay out a outline of exactly what you mean by a dynamic MMO and a definition of what you would consider a next generation MMO. Until then you are just regurgitating buzzwords trying to look like you are somehow superior. Any fool can take a hammer and tear something apart but it takes skill to build something. heres a chance to show what kind of a builder you are.
nice try to bait me - however you wont fool me into such a discussion. The problem with people like you is that you can not imagine what is not right in front of you. I did a test many months back, i described a new idea to the official forums of LOTRO and got flamed down like no tomorrow - so what i did was i spent 6 houers to draw the buttons and blent them into the lotro setting, it actually looked very pro - guess what: the same people (who wrote very similar to your style) that flamed the idea a week before cheered and said, damn when do they bring this live? They where quite disappointed when they noticed it wasnt dev preview pics but player drawn pics.
In 20 years of engineering i learned that for most people you need a functional sample before they actually understand what you are talking about. Since my coding knowledge is rather little i cannot deliver such a sample.
in other words you have not the slightest idea what a next gen dynamic MMO is other than a few nice buzzwords that shady devs like to toss out . As I pointed out dynamics spawning and a influencable world is fine for a single player game, but it is completely impossible for the game design of a MMO
nice try to bait me - however you wont fool me into such a discussion. The problem with people like you is that you can not imagine what is not right in front of you. I did a test many months back, i described a new idea to the official forums of LOTRO and got flamed down like no tomorrow - so what i did was i spent 6 houers to draw the buttons and blent them into the lotro setting, it actually looked very pro - guess what: the same people (who wrote very similar to your style) that flamed the idea a week before cheered and said, damn when do they bring this live? They where quite disappointed when they noticed it wasnt dev preview pics but player drawn pics. In 20 years of engineering i learned that for most people you need a functional sample before they actually understand what you are talking about. Since my coding knowledge is rather little i cannot deliver such a sample. However you may wish to look at some of the older (single player) games (1985-1995) where quests had alternative routes, with player influenced outcomes. In LOTRO it always was like "so you let me watch the intro and travel the 3D world, when can i play?, no please not another intro i wanna play!" I wish you fun in LOTRO, you dont deserve a better game since you cant imagine a better game.
Hehe
Offcourse MMOs are not at the end of the line, but to slam lotro alone for not prgressing the genre, dynamic world wise, is just idiotic.
What you are saying here, have already been said a million times all around this forum. It is nothing new. We all want a more dynamic world then we have today. But, here you are stating the obvious, backing it up with flawed examples...funny.
I also found it rather funny you gave us WAR's PQ as an example of dynamic quest system.. PQ are the very defination of static content.
nice try to bait me - however you wont fool me into such a discussion. The problem with people like you is that you can not imagine what is not right in front of you. I did a test many months back, i described a new idea to the official forums of LOTRO and got flamed down like no tomorrow - so what i did was i spent 6 houers to draw the buttons and blent them into the lotro setting, it actually looked very pro - guess what: the same people (who wrote very similar to your style) that flamed the idea a week before cheered and said, damn when do they bring this live? They where quite disappointed when they noticed it wasnt dev preview pics but player drawn pics. In 20 years of engineering i learned that for most people you need a functional sample before they actually understand what you are talking about. Since my coding knowledge is rather little i cannot deliver such a sample. However you may wish to look at some of the older (single player) games (1985-1995) where quests had alternative routes, with player influenced outcomes. In LOTRO it always was like "so you let me watch the intro and travel the 3D world, when can i play?, no please not another intro i wanna play!" I wish you fun in LOTRO, you dont deserve a better game since you cant imagine a better game.
Hehe
Offcourse MMOs are not at the end of the line, but to slam lotro alone for not prgressing the genre, dynamic world wise, is just idiotic.
What you are saying here, have already been said a million times all around this forum. It is nothing new. We all want a more dynamic world then we have today. But, here you are stating the obvious, backing it up with flawed examples...funny.
I also found it rather funny you gave us WAR's PQ as an example of dynamic quest system.. PQ are the very defination of static content.
i know it has been said hundreds of thousends of times on this and other forums, because its just true. Lotro is a coward design, daring nothing new with no inovation at all, or in other words, sucking up gamer money with the least possible risk.
yes the WAR PQ's are of course static, but if you look at it in detail you will notice that whenever your toon reaches an area where a public quest is going on, the state of that quest is different. Sometimes its near the end, sometimes it just began sometimes you reach the area when there is competition between the 2 factions and sometimes not. And all these different states of the same quest can hit you without you knowing before. Looking at PQ's like this, they in fact are dynamic compared to the static quest giver standing there, ordering you to kill X wolfs or boars at their static spawnspots. Of course it is still far from real dynamics, but it goes into that direction clearly and that is what i said.
nah Bursche you are just spouting a bunch of words, prove to me how I am wrong , lay out a outline of exactly what you mean by a dynamic MMO and a definition of what you would consider a next generation MMO. Until then you are just regurgitating buzzwords trying to look like you are somehow superior. Any fool can take a hammer and tear something apart but it takes skill to build something. heres a chance to show what kind of a builder you are.
nice try to bait me - however you wont fool me into such a discussion. The problem with people like you is that you can not imagine what is not right in front of you. I did a test many months back, i described a new idea to the official forums of LOTRO and got flamed down like no tomorrow - so what i did was i spent 6 houers to draw the buttons and blent them into the lotro setting, it actually looked very pro - guess what: the same people (who wrote very similar to your style) that flamed the idea a week before cheered and said, damn when do they bring this live? They where quite disappointed when they noticed it wasnt dev preview pics but player drawn pics.
In 20 years of engineering i learned that for most people you need a functional sample before they actually understand what you are talking about. Since my coding knowledge is rather little i cannot deliver such a sample.
in other words you have not the slightest idea what a next gen dynamic MMO is other than a few nice buzzwords that shady devs like to toss out . As I pointed out dynamics spawning and a influencable world is fine for a single player game, but it is completely impossible for the game design of a MMO
you can try twist the words as much as you like, i told you why giving examples does not work for people with no imagination and no fantasy.
I must say I came to MMOs from a Pen and Paper background, and I was instantly disappointed in how non-changing the world was. Everyone got the same "kill 20 rats" quests, and 90% of the quests was a copy-paste version of it. Insofar I tasted enough of this simple gameplay now. I think that past games caught the spirit of open world a bit better. The uncertainty added a sort of "reality" that maybe wasnt really there. Let me make an example. In the old days of say, when Ultima V-VII was new, graphics where not photo realistic, but nice for me. Much of it was not in the game, but rather in my mind. Or with pearls like the first System Shock. I felt that game was WAY more spooky than say Bioshock. Photorealism kinda kills a bit of the fantasy. No shock is as great as the one in your head. And IMVPO the "gaps" in games like UO and EQ1 were similarly filled with the imagination of the players. There was also SO MUCH to discover, so much for such a long time. I recall well it took me YEARS to really discover the majority of the SWG content. That too had that language learning thing. I dont want to preach the return to SWG or EQ, but the way games are made today just IS a sort of simplification, also. Which add it all this. I pretty much completely agree with you on this, except I have to say the first time I encountered the Saturnines in Bioshock - I kept hearing this voice talking around me ... I walked up to some workbench and there is this Blair Witch-looking goat mask on the table all spooky and stuff and then I turned around to leave and this freaky guy is standing right behind me!! I literally almost p1ssed my pants on that one. I 've had similar moments like that in the old games, even the text-based games, but not quite like that. Bioshock is a good example of a game that didn't necessarily sacrifice quality story and gameplay for quality graphics. In the old days, games were not more personal, or not much more. But we FELT like it, because they were vast, open and it took time to explore and know it all. So there always was this imagined secret lands or regions not yet seen in our minds. Today it is all mapped and charted and explained in Allakazam, and everyone uses the "optimal skill setting" as explained of website XYZ. It is no longer really the feeling to exploring strange new worlds, but to see familiar things over and over again. The novelty is gone for us, and the game scopes have also become more narrow IMO. Even tho the existing parts have been perfected, no doubt. Personally I think the next MMO frontier is player-generated content. That is the only way to truly achieve this - allowing players to make their own instanced dungeons, lairs and whatnot. Think of a game like DDO where you get to run a different dungeon every night instead of running the same ones over and over.
Of course all of this is only going to last as long as the cheap energy keeps flowing and our monetary system stays afloat. Once the internet goes back to being a military and scientific communications tool instead of the commercial gang-bang it is today I have a feeling Pen and Paper will make a comeback in a big way ... and there is no Allakhazam or Wowhead for your own imagination.
EDIT: Also, I forgot to mention (remembered after looking at my sig) if anyone really wants all of the cool stuff that has been discussed follow the Lusternia link in my sig - bettery yet go there then follow the Vote link to the top site it's connected to and you will find thousands of MMORPGs that offer all of this and more. The thing is they are MUDs and and ZERO graphics. But if you crave the unknown and want to face penalties and extremely deep gameplay there are many, many that will give you that.
i know it has been said hundreds of thousends of times on this and other forums, because its just true. Lotro is a coward design, daring nothing new with no inovation at all, or in other words, sucking up gamer money with the least possible risk. yes the WAR PQ's are of course static, but if you look at it in detail you will notice that whenever your toon reaches an area where a public quest is going on, the state of that quest is different. Sometimes its near the end, sometimes it just began sometimes you reach the area when there is competition between the 2 factions and sometimes not. And all these different states of the same quest can hit you without you knowing before. Looking at PQ's like this, they in fact are dynamic compared to the static quest giver standing there, ordering you to kill X wolfs or boars at their static spawnspots. Of course it is still far from real dynamics, but it goes into that direction clearly and that is what i said.
And after completion it resets back; Fallen trees rise up, burnt houses are suddenly fixed etc.. What you trying to explain is no different than a NPC rescue/protect quest in lotro.
I also find it very odd that you defend WAR and slam lotro. WAR is a newer game, yet they didnt try to innovate their game world - quite the opposite actually. WAR's world is small, claustrophobic and hopelessly linear. Not to mention its just as static as all the other MMOs.
i know it has been said hundreds of thousends of times on this and other forums, because its just true. Lotro is a coward design, daring nothing new with no inovation at all, or in other words, sucking up gamer money with the least possible risk. yes the WAR PQ's are of course static, but if you look at it in detail you will notice that whenever your toon reaches an area where a public quest is going on, the state of that quest is different. Sometimes its near the end, sometimes it just began sometimes you reach the area when there is competition between the 2 factions and sometimes not. And all these different states of the same quest can hit you without you knowing before. Looking at PQ's like this, they in fact are dynamic compared to the static quest giver standing there, ordering you to kill X wolfs or boars at their static spawnspots. Of course it is still far from real dynamics, but it goes into that direction clearly and that is what i said.
And after completion it resets back; Fallen trees rise up, burnt houses are suddenly fixed etc.. What you trying to explain is no different than a NPC rescue/protect quest in lotro.
I also find it very odd that you defend WAR and slam lotro. WAR is a newer game, yet they didnt try to innovate their game world - quite the opposite actually. WAR's world is small, claustrophobic and hopelessly linear. Not to mention its just as static as all the other MMOs.
Pretty strange for the poster to put WAR's world over LOTRO! LOTRO has it's flaws but you get a sense of travelling in a world. I love the PvP in WAR and the scenarios but their 'world' is badly done. There's no sense of being in a world. It seems small and instanced. Paths don't match up when you change maps. You even head west out of one map and enter by the south on the next one messing up any sense of continuation! WAR feels more like navigating a flow chart. But since it's all about fun PvP nobody really bothers. I mean who still does PQs !?
i know it has been said hundreds of thousends of times on this and other forums, because its just true. Lotro is a coward design, daring nothing new with no inovation at all, or in other words, sucking up gamer money with the least possible risk. yes the WAR PQ's are of course static, but if you look at it in detail you will notice that whenever your toon reaches an area where a public quest is going on, the state of that quest is different. Sometimes its near the end, sometimes it just began sometimes you reach the area when there is competition between the 2 factions and sometimes not. And all these different states of the same quest can hit you without you knowing before. Looking at PQ's like this, they in fact are dynamic compared to the static quest giver standing there, ordering you to kill X wolfs or boars at their static spawnspots. Of course it is still far from real dynamics, but it goes into that direction clearly and that is what i said.
And after completion it resets back; Fallen trees rise up, burnt houses are suddenly fixed etc.. What you trying to explain is no different than a NPC rescue/protect quest in lotro.
I also find it very odd that you defend WAR and slam lotro. WAR is a newer game, yet they didnt try to innovate their game world - quite the opposite actually. WAR's world is small, claustrophobic and hopelessly linear. Not to mention its just as static as all the other MMOs.
Of course it resets back, that is the meaning of a dynamic circle, when your finished it, it starts over. But at what point of the circle you enter is random if its complex and wide enough.
Also man, you need to see colors between black and white, nowhere did i defend WAR, i gave an example for a shy step in the direction of more dynamic worlds, like the TR example with their battle camps. My guess is that the devs wanted more but the investors and naysayers did not let them.
If i was a WAR fan i would be subscribed for it, i am not - left it after 8 weeks and am not planning to go back, for actually the things you mentioned. Still to me it is fact that their public quest system added some shy sort of dynamics in my player experience since i never knew at whicht stage of the quest i arrive -> the world around me was changing (for a while), depending how players acted and that is the right way to go in my opinion.
And no, NPC recue protect quests in LOTRO do not cover that element, they are as old as the shawl quest in kunark (EQ)
And no, NPC recue protect quests in LOTRO do not cover that element, they are as old as the shawl quest in kunark (EQ)
I know these type of quests are old, but thats beside the point. Both quest types have a small dynamic change on the world while active and resets after its done. Other players see the change, if close by. The only minor difference is - who and how players join the quest...
To summarize; you are here slamming lotro for not doing something, no other MMO company has done yet.
Comments
"Freedom is just another name for nothing left to lose" - Janis Joplin
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LOTRO was a let-down after Moria's release for me. I waited for LOTRO release for years and was in open beta asap. Sadly, LOTRO for me was a total waste of time other then the great kinship I got to be part of.
"I play Tera for the gameplay"
If the biggest complaint you can find with loTRO is that it is a static world you realize you just described every MMORPG that has ever existed or is in development. Possible exception might be Second Life and I don't think that really qualifies as a game. Even Eve which is the closest a game has come to a virtual world has the same missions for every player all ships are essentually the same and the same systems are there from week to week withlittle change. The marke tis quite dynamic though and that is cool.
The original SWG tried but missed by a mile and a half and was pretty much epic fail in retrospect. It's resources were dynamic but that was all really. The player cities were cool till they rtuned into player ghettos.
I miss DAoC
If the only defence for your beloved mmo is that others have the same flaws then you just agreed with my statement that all the crap currently on the market is not "next generation" mmo.
In my humble opinion specially The Lord of the Rings should have made an exception and not be a market clone. That is my opinion and that is why i find it was a wasted license. And while i do agree with your summary that all MMO's are more or less static, The Lord of the Rings encouraged that impression with invisible walls everywhere. In no other MMO have i felt so caged in and forced to be where the game wants me to be at a certain level and klick exactly the buttons in exactly the sequence the coders prepared them for. Before the current LOTRO could actually dream of becomming dynamic it would need to become open first.
Nothing to defend here. Your saying LoTRO sucks because it has a static world is like saying a car sucks because it has 4 wheels and cannot magically teleport you to your destination. You will never see what you are demanding to see so I think it is time for you to find a new hobby
I miss DAoC
Have you even played LOTRO? Is this a joke.... are we getting "punk'd? I am going to conclude from your post that if you have played your experience was limited and most likely confined to a free trial version, IMVHO.
Nothing to defend here. Your saying LoTRO sucks because it has a static world is like saying a car sucks because it has 4 wheels and cannot magically teleport you to your destination. You will never see what you are demanding to see so I think it is time for you to find a new hobby
The same thing was said 120 years ago about having horse drawn carriages without horses and uh they invented cars. The same thing was said about maps that automatically tell you the route while driving and now we have GPS. And probably the same was said about Online games where more than 4 people can share the same game experience at the same time like 30 years ago. What you are saying is that the current state of developement is the end of the road and will not improve to more dynamic realistic and open worlds.
Have you even played LOTRO? Is this a joke.... are we getting "punk'd? I am going to conclude from your post that if you have played your experience was limited and most likely confined to a free trial version, IMVHO.
i bored myself to like 38 or 39 with a burglar and to like 15 with a minstrell. At the end i logged in to chat with the kin and after a while i found it easier to just log into a normal internet chat for that experience. I jumped that fence at the starting sequence to hit the dark knight but couldnt and dozens of other examples like that. Always only exactly one thing to do. No alternatives.
Of course i missed a couple of the miniraids (24 people is a miniraid for me, and for sure not epic or mmoish) but i saw orcs respawn where i killed them 60 seconds before like in games that have their 10th aniversary just now. What a progress. So maybe it is not me who has not played enough LOTRO but maybe you who has not seen or at least imagined MORE than LOTRO.
gotta love it when the kids toss around such esoteric terms such as a dynamic world and next gen game . That makes think they sound like like a big time dev, but in reality it just shows how ignorant they are.
You will never ever see a dynamic world in a MMO simply because it is a MMO. So you kill the orcs, guess what Sherlock, you think that guy right behind you might like to to kill some orcs too? You just finished the ring quest, Good for you Frodozon, I guess those other 499,999 players have just wasted their time because you got to the finish before they did. Ok all you players the games over now, ring was destroyed, everyone log off so we can shut the servers down.
Jesus kids, get a brain. No one in the business can even define next gen MMO, all that is is a buzzword tossed around by shyster developers who are conning you into worshipping at the alter of their own persoanl dream of fortune and fame.. No one would recognize a next gen MMO if one urinated on their leg,
LoTRO. WoW, AOC, the EQ brothers, DAOC, WAR etc etc are all basically DIKU combat muds, what you think you want is a social mud and there already is a huge one called 2nd life , so run on over there and see how you like it.
I am messing with Eve right now and it has a nice universe, but at the center of all the complexity is still a very very static world. The same agents give the same quests to everyone, just like every popular MMO in existence and all the ones in development.
I miss DAoC
Have you even played LOTRO? Is this a joke.... are we getting "punk'd? I am going to conclude from your post that if you have played your experience was limited and most likely confined to a free trial version, IMVHO.
i bored myself to like 38 or 39 with a burglar and to like 15 with a minstrell. At the end i logged in to chat with the kin and after a while i found it easier to just log into a normal internet chat for that experience. I jumped that fence at the starting sequence to hit the dark knight but couldnt and dozens of other examples like that. Always only exactly one thing to do. No alternatives.
Of course i missed a couple of the miniraids (24 people is a miniraid for me, and for sure not epic or mmoish) but i saw orcs respawn where i killed them 60 seconds before like in games that have their 10th aniversary just now. What a progress. So maybe it is not me who has not played enough LOTRO but maybe you who has not seen or at least imagined MORE than LOTRO.
I was trying to formulate a response, but as I re-read your post I realise you really haven't said anything.... live well you crazy dreamer
You said it brother! At the end of any day they all are just a games limited by the tech availible and while I am hopeful that MMO will continue to evolve it is a process that takes time; as I see it Devs have really, for the most part, given the players what they have wanted visually stunning worlds with improved charater modeling. Eye candy sells bottom line. I beleive that when there is a shift from the play base majority we will see a shift in Dev development and product. IMVHO
there you go fanboys
that is why i so rarely post on these boards at all, once someone steps up and critisises the precious product the insults begin. subtle or direct.
anyway, i do not really count myself a dev altho i do hold a couple of world wide patents - that just comes when you are an engineer. What i find laughable is the argument that what we currently get is the max possible.
No it is industrialised world cloning, with standart zones and standart core quests. Only very little has changed in the past 10 years and that is a shame because the genre had alot more potential back in 1999. For me there is one big mistake in the latest MMOs and most that are in developement.
They are designed so that a casual solo gamer will see 90%+ of the content.
If i wanted a game like that i would play single player offline games. What i want from an MMO is the group experience where at least as a large group you can change the world for a while (dynamic). TR tried that in a really bad attempt but basically it was the right idea just poorly finished. WAR offers something similar with their public quest system (which is nice, if you have a publicity for it).
The attempts for more dynamic worlds are there in the new games, they are shy and you can actually imagine the discussions between the visionaries and the investors.
Visionary: "Lets put 150 houers into adding this dynamic quest circle".
Investor: "Nah, thats 15000$ plus the debugging and testing - WOW does not need that to be successful either".
Visionary: "But we want to be different from WOW!"
Investor: "Yeah but not success wise".
Visionary: "sigh..."
Anyway, as this thread is progressing into a fanboy-beat-me-up game - i am out, cu in future threads where people wonder why static worlds are so boring.
nah Bursche you are just spouting a bunch of words, prove to me how I am wrong , lay out a outline of exactly what you mean by a dynamic MMO and a definition of what you would consider a next generation MMO. Until then you are just regurgitating buzzwords trying to look like you are somehow superior. Any fool can take a hammer and tear something apart but it takes skill to build something. heres a chance to show what kind of a builder you are.
I miss DAoC
nice try to bait me - however you wont fool me into such a discussion. The problem with people like you is that you can not imagine what is not right in front of you. I did a test many months back, i described a new idea to the official forums of LOTRO and got flamed down like no tomorrow - so what i did was i spent 6 houers to draw the buttons and blent them into the lotro setting, it actually looked very pro - guess what: the same people (who wrote very similar to your style) that flamed the idea a week before cheered and said, damn when do they bring this live? They where quite disappointed when they noticed it wasnt dev preview pics but player drawn pics.
In 20 years of engineering i learned that for most people you need a functional sample before they actually understand what you are talking about. Since my coding knowledge is rather little i cannot deliver such a sample.
However you may wish to look at some of the older (single player) games (1985-1995) where quests had alternative routes, with player influenced outcomes.
In LOTRO it always was like "so you let me watch the intro and travel the 3D world, when can i play?, no please not another intro i wanna play!"
I wish you fun in LOTRO, you dont deserve a better game since you cant imagine a better game.
Haaa.... award for best thread title. Good job.
nice try to bait me - however you wont fool me into such a discussion. The problem with people like you is that you can not imagine what is not right in front of you. I did a test many months back, i described a new idea to the official forums of LOTRO and got flamed down like no tomorrow - so what i did was i spent 6 houers to draw the buttons and blent them into the lotro setting, it actually looked very pro - guess what: the same people (who wrote very similar to your style) that flamed the idea a week before cheered and said, damn when do they bring this live? They where quite disappointed when they noticed it wasnt dev preview pics but player drawn pics.
In 20 years of engineering i learned that for most people you need a functional sample before they actually understand what you are talking about. Since my coding knowledge is rather little i cannot deliver such a sample.
in other words you have not the slightest idea what a next gen dynamic MMO is other than a few nice buzzwords that shady devs like to toss out . As I pointed out dynamics spawning and a influencable world is fine for a single player game, but it is completely impossible for the game design of a MMO
I miss DAoC
Hehe
Offcourse MMOs are not at the end of the line, but to slam lotro alone for not prgressing the genre, dynamic world wise, is just idiotic.
What you are saying here, have already been said a million times all around this forum. It is nothing new. We all want a more dynamic world then we have today. But, here you are stating the obvious, backing it up with flawed examples...funny.
I also found it rather funny you gave us WAR's PQ as an example of dynamic quest system.. PQ are the very defination of static content.
Hehe
Offcourse MMOs are not at the end of the line, but to slam lotro alone for not prgressing the genre, dynamic world wise, is just idiotic.
What you are saying here, have already been said a million times all around this forum. It is nothing new. We all want a more dynamic world then we have today. But, here you are stating the obvious, backing it up with flawed examples...funny.
I also found it rather funny you gave us WAR's PQ as an example of dynamic quest system.. PQ are the very defination of static content.
i know it has been said hundreds of thousends of times on this and other forums, because its just true. Lotro is a coward design, daring nothing new with no inovation at all, or in other words, sucking up gamer money with the least possible risk.
yes the WAR PQ's are of course static, but if you look at it in detail you will notice that whenever your toon reaches an area where a public quest is going on, the state of that quest is different. Sometimes its near the end, sometimes it just began sometimes you reach the area when there is competition between the 2 factions and sometimes not. And all these different states of the same quest can hit you without you knowing before. Looking at PQ's like this, they in fact are dynamic compared to the static quest giver standing there, ordering you to kill X wolfs or boars at their static spawnspots. Of course it is still far from real dynamics, but it goes into that direction clearly and that is what i said.
nice try to bait me - however you wont fool me into such a discussion. The problem with people like you is that you can not imagine what is not right in front of you. I did a test many months back, i described a new idea to the official forums of LOTRO and got flamed down like no tomorrow - so what i did was i spent 6 houers to draw the buttons and blent them into the lotro setting, it actually looked very pro - guess what: the same people (who wrote very similar to your style) that flamed the idea a week before cheered and said, damn when do they bring this live? They where quite disappointed when they noticed it wasnt dev preview pics but player drawn pics.
In 20 years of engineering i learned that for most people you need a functional sample before they actually understand what you are talking about. Since my coding knowledge is rather little i cannot deliver such a sample.
in other words you have not the slightest idea what a next gen dynamic MMO is other than a few nice buzzwords that shady devs like to toss out . As I pointed out dynamics spawning and a influencable world is fine for a single player game, but it is completely impossible for the game design of a MMO
you can try twist the words as much as you like, i told you why giving examples does not work for people with no imagination and no fantasy.
why don't you just admit you have no idea what you are talking about
I miss DAoC
EDIT: Also, I forgot to mention (remembered after looking at my sig) if anyone really wants all of the cool stuff that has been discussed follow the Lusternia link in my sig - bettery yet go there then follow the Vote link to the top site it's connected to and you will find thousands of MMORPGs that offer all of this and more. The thing is they are MUDs and and ZERO graphics. But if you crave the unknown and want to face penalties and extremely deep gameplay there are many, many that will give you that.
And after completion it resets back; Fallen trees rise up, burnt houses are suddenly fixed etc.. What you trying to explain is no different than a NPC rescue/protect quest in lotro.
I also find it very odd that you defend WAR and slam lotro. WAR is a newer game, yet they didnt try to innovate their game world - quite the opposite actually. WAR's world is small, claustrophobic and hopelessly linear. Not to mention its just as static as all the other MMOs.
And after completion it resets back; Fallen trees rise up, burnt houses are suddenly fixed etc.. What you trying to explain is no different than a NPC rescue/protect quest in lotro.
I also find it very odd that you defend WAR and slam lotro. WAR is a newer game, yet they didnt try to innovate their game world - quite the opposite actually. WAR's world is small, claustrophobic and hopelessly linear. Not to mention its just as static as all the other MMOs.
Pretty strange for the poster to put WAR's world over LOTRO! LOTRO has it's flaws but you get a sense of travelling in a world. I love the PvP in WAR and the scenarios but their 'world' is badly done. There's no sense of being in a world. It seems small and instanced. Paths don't match up when you change maps. You even head west out of one map and enter by the south on the next one messing up any sense of continuation! WAR feels more like navigating a flow chart. But since it's all about fun PvP nobody really bothers. I mean who still does PQs !?
And after completion it resets back; Fallen trees rise up, burnt houses are suddenly fixed etc.. What you trying to explain is no different than a NPC rescue/protect quest in lotro.
I also find it very odd that you defend WAR and slam lotro. WAR is a newer game, yet they didnt try to innovate their game world - quite the opposite actually. WAR's world is small, claustrophobic and hopelessly linear. Not to mention its just as static as all the other MMOs.
Of course it resets back, that is the meaning of a dynamic circle, when your finished it, it starts over. But at what point of the circle you enter is random if its complex and wide enough.
Also man, you need to see colors between black and white, nowhere did i defend WAR, i gave an example for a shy step in the direction of more dynamic worlds, like the TR example with their battle camps. My guess is that the devs wanted more but the investors and naysayers did not let them.
If i was a WAR fan i would be subscribed for it, i am not - left it after 8 weeks and am not planning to go back, for actually the things you mentioned. Still to me it is fact that their public quest system added some shy sort of dynamics in my player experience since i never knew at whicht stage of the quest i arrive -> the world around me was changing (for a while), depending how players acted and that is the right way to go in my opinion.
And no, NPC recue protect quests in LOTRO do not cover that element, they are as old as the shawl quest in kunark (EQ)
I know these type of quests are old, but thats beside the point. Both quest types have a small dynamic change on the world while active and resets after its done. Other players see the change, if close by. The only minor difference is - who and how players join the quest...
To summarize; you are here slamming lotro for not doing something, no other MMO company has done yet.
Bravo!