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Degradation of MMOs ~ WoW one of the factors
divibanez
Member Posts: 14
This is simply a thread to make those of you who have noticed what is happening in the MMO community these days shake your head in disgust. I was talking to a long time friend and MMO gamer today who for the last couple years has been obbsessed with WoW. Before that we played tons of f2p MMOs together like, Runescape ( don't hate, my interenet was'nt fast enough to pop my MMO cherry on UO or Everquest ) Kal Online, Rappelz, Archlord, GW and countless other Korean Grindathons. But today he said something that shook me to my core. We were talking about the Aion open beta and he said " Yeah, i just don't like it. There are no tips or anything to help with quests" and his other complaint was about global cooldown and general feel of the game.
So there it is again. WoW has been spoon feeding it's players like 5 year old children that even veteran real MMO players are becoming spoiled by the ease and simplicity. Sad i know...
Division Bell ( best Pink Floyd album) + Ibanez Guitar = divibanez
Comments
Hm. Nearly QQ, because the point has been made numerous times before. However, I think that it does have validity.
While I am all for everybody playing the type of game >they< like, I think that WoW has been damaging to the MMORPG industry because in the poor global economy, game investors give developers much less leeway than they did during the .com era. So, I have the uneasy feeling that a lot of good concepts are twisted and quashed early on in favor of the "safe bet" - WoW clones. This means WoW-like worlds, WoW-like character progression, and WoW like controls. Consider the diversity of MMORPGs up to 2003, and the diversity of games afterwards. Not that there weren't quite a number of EQ clones.
And it is true that whilst WoW is a very stable game with a proficient and large development and marketing team, its control and quest system interfaces are truthfully very simple - and that earlier levels of the game become increasingly simple as years and expansions progress.
It comes as a shock to move to more complex games after playing WoW style games for several years.
What's QQ?
Division Bell ( best Pink Floyd album) + Ibanez Guitar = divibanez
WoW made playing an mmo socially exceptable be thankful for that. Blame developers for the crap games that keep coming out not WoW
QQ is a rant that is more emotional than anything else ^^
But like I said above, you make a valid point.
sounds like your friend has been burnt-out by WoW.
I quit WoW 3 years ago to get a life and because I hated the kiddie community left over from when all the good pplz left.
After playing Aion OB with a few guildies, I've never been so excited for a new release in all the years I've played MMOs!
WoW was not my first MMO thank god or else i'd be just as desensitized to the MMORPG genre as the millions of WoW players playing a spoon-fed theme park game.
I agree with you that WoW must die, it's setting a bad example to new gamers and vets alike. If your main dislike of Aion is because you actually get challenged in a way that WoW never did then allow me to say this again..
WoW burnt you out from the MMORPG genre and honestly there is NO new MMO that will ever catch your interest until you take a good long break from MMOs in general.
I couldn't stand WoW for more than 6 months at a time and would only come back when they added new content... eventually you start to see the world outside of the carrot-on-a-stick and taking a long vacation from it will help you find new enthusiasm for MMOs.
good luck to your friend.
On the bright side, there is a plethora of great single-player games and multiplayer shooters to choose from. And they are free to play.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Yeah i agree. I think part of the thing that keeps people coming back to MMOs is that feeling of self gratification. "Ooh i just hit the next level point where now i can wear all this new stuff, and use all these new skills, and eneter these new dungeons!" The problem is, in past MMOs you had to work for that feeling. Now it seems like games are trying to give you that on a common basis. Like completing easy quests with so called" story lines" even though we all know theres no need to read anything the NPC is saying knowing that once we click "ok i'll go kill/find those items for you!" Our HUD will tell us what to do, saving us time.
Division Bell ( best Pink Floyd album) + Ibanez Guitar = divibanez
Dont' blame WOW for lousy MMOs. Blame developers for not being able to keep up. People play what they find fun. If most people find WOW fun, you're going to blame the developers? Blame a maturing genre. It changes with the market and the market got sick of MMOs designed just for no life nerds who can dedicate 3 or 4 hrs at a time. It was always absurd that a game would force you to do that just to advance or do anything meaningful. REALLY sad.
100% correct.
(DISCLAIMER - The use of the word YOU in the above post is not directed at any one person in particular, but towards those who fall into the category itself - there is no personal attack here, neither intentional nor implied.)
This does sound mildly QQ, because we all know it. It is not just the MMO games, however. It is happening to all games. Do you remember the first widely-available game consoles, Atari, NES? Those games had some seriously hard games. And now games have no punishment for failure, and usually no serious challenge for your competence. This may be rose-lenses of the past, but I think not. I think there is a trend towards easier games because they sell more copies. Remember, the people here talking to one another are not your "average gamer." They are more serious on the whole, and that means they play more, think more about it, and as a rule are better at games as a result. Because the market for such challenging games is smaller than the market for easy, simplistic games, expect the trend to continue until it reaches a point where the majority of people are too bored by how easy games are. At that point, they will try to find the happy medium that makes the most money. I cannot predict what will happen, but I think it is quite unlikely we will see serious reform at any point in the foreseeable future.
Some of the games are fun, however, so it is simply a matter of sifting through it all.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
WTF? No subscription fee?
WoW has really messed up the MMO market. It has really failed in the case that the new standard is WoW. And, now MMOs are supposed to copy this game if they want to be successful. Look at games that haven't copied WoW for instance, they have failed even quicker. I think that no one wants to step out and create an MMO unlike WoW because they're scared it will fail. WoW is a proven method for success and the word MMO is being shaped by WoW.
Try Fallen Earth, great game, nothing like WoW, already full of people for early access, very innovative.
I think the problem lies more in the fact that WoW created something that encapsulates the interest of the mainstream. In the pay to play business model of MMOs, the annual income of a company is in linear proportion to its number of active subscriptions. Hence, more subscriptions=more money. I think that a lot of pre-WoW MMOs saw their subscribers as a niche market and catered to that existing (and smaller) MMO population. WoW made their game with on-the-fly tutorials, simple interface, family-friendly content (T for Teen), and baby-steps character development and in doing so, managed to capture the interest of the MMO virgin and non-gaming populations. So in addition to stealing a lot of the MMO subscribers from the competing MMOs of that day, WoW has managed to grow the market by diluting it with an entirely new mainstream population.
I don't know if that was their original intention but regardless, WoW was either the first game that figured out how to draw subscribers from outside the established MMO niche market, or the first game that tried to. And whichever the case, it is becoming more and more apparent with every development release that Blizzard understands the nature of WoW's success, and they will continue to 'improve' their game so that it holds the biggest piece of MMO subscribership in the industry.
This means (among other things) more idiot-proofing of the interface and faster progression in the early stages of the game. It also means that we can count on WoW creating content that will mimic the 'original features' of any new fantasy MMO themepark-type game that appears, resulting in the instant submission of emerging competitors who are too financially underdeveloped to retaliate. I'm not sure how (or if) WoW intends to compete with the development of graphics engines, but even when and if WoW's graphics engine becomes so outdated that people abandon the game, the stage is already set for another WoW-like game with better graphics to step up to dominate the industry in exactly the same way.
So how will the quality-craving core of the MMO community get the gameplay experience it knows the industry is capable of delivering? Probably by paying a higher subscription price. Sooner or later, some company is going to say 'damn the torpedoes', borrow that extra 20 million on development to ensure a 99% bug-free launch, forecast an annual overhead that is 15% higher than the standard, and charge a 30% higher monthly subscription in order to deliver a gameplay experience that some of us are willing to pay extra for.
You cannot blame WoWs success for the inept amature attempts from other developers, there have been many games that tried to move away from WoW but they mostly failed on their own merits and failings.
The OP just sounds bitter and clearly suffering from WoW burnout, all things in moderation.
The funny thing is, nearly EVERY quest has a 'locate' feature that will point you exactly to where you need to go (provided you are on the right map). As for the other thing's your friend complained about, it's really all subjective / personal taste.
I think you've kind of touched on it, though your title suggests otherwise. It's not necessarily MMOs that are degrading, it's the players (and more specifically, western players) perception of them. I've been following MMOs for a while now (since EQ days) and players are A LOT more demanding now, a lot less forgiving, and a lot more finnicky when it comes to supporting the games they do like. This makes for a very bad business market, and I think we are starting to see the results of this. Companies are much more reluctant to try too many new things, and MMOs are favoring larger dev companies / collaborations more and more.
This isn't because everyone expects to pull a Blizzard, but rather because it's almost necessary to do this now, to offset the tremendous amount of risk and overhead these games require. It's no longer acceptable to have a solid / stable base game to start with, onto which a company would be expected to build on later. Nowadays people want to 'feel' like a game is offering the impossible. (7-15years worth of polish, content, and debugging, delivered in less than half the time.)
Different players have different preference for what a fun game is to be.
Majority of this genre feels that WoW is fun, while the rest does not. So why blame WoW ? If you dont like WoW it just means that the playstyle is not for you. That's all.
Your friend simply feels that with those things around it is fun for him. Its his preference, and Blizz sees all these features and implement and comes out with a successful formula.
Remember, tediuos dosent mean hardcore. But it certainly means not fun.
Look for other games out there than. If you find that majority of the games play like WoW than blame the other developers for their limited creativity.
But business is all the same, one product comes out and is successful all others will try to mimic it. This will goes on till 1 fine day another compay comes out and do something different that can provide another level of fun, and entice another millions of players, than the rest of the mmo companies will follow it, rinse and repeat.
So dont blame WoW, instead we should look at why and how its done and improve upon that and incooperate with the playstyle that others like...
RIP Orc Choppa
Yes WoW is not the reason. The reason are the investors. WoW already get his market and its almost impossible to get part of it., but many greedy investors look at Blizzard pocket and want to take a part of it. That way trying to use WoW schema just ruin the game because it will not be liked from both WoW players and players that like something different.
Where themepark games try to hide that they are copying WOW, games like Mortal Online and Darkfall make no attempt to hide their inspiration
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LordOfDarkDesire
i forgot to mention this earlier but did you guys even bother to search for any quest help?
www.aionarmory.com/
this is the thottbot of Aion, and I don't know how WoW is now but back in the day WoW quests weren't as hand-holding as it is seen to be these days. Almost anything you couldn't figure out on your own could be found via thottbot. The quest helping addons only came out years after initial launch, for the majority of WoW players who played it at conception you would be wise to remember all the bugs and lag issues Blizzard had back in the day, when comparing it to newer games.
I've played all the new wow-clones with the exception of WAR, and most of them promised things they just couldn't deliver in time to keep their subs.
Aion is worth a second look because if you took the time to notice, everything they promised is there. Looking at Aion Open Beta as well as the various support and fansites (www.aionsource.com) there is proof enough that Aion is more polished and more bug free than WoW ever was during its last Beta Tests.
Aion is like a refuge for WoW players who loved it in the beginning but got burnt-out. Those that miss open world PVP, are sick of BGs, sick of arenas and bored with current endgame raids should see Aion as a breath of fresh air... if not then you either need to vacation from MMOs in general, or you'll never be satisfied by any new MMO out there if it isn't WoW... they call it WoWcrack for a reason lol.
It took a year or two for people to migrate over to WoW from their last MMO once ppl realized how much better it was than X MMO. I suspect once the PVP crowd sees how much more in depth Aion is then they will begin to migrate.
I don't mind that WoW will always be a beast, but it's sad to see people that legitimately want to leave WoW for something different, but just can't break their addiction long enough to see that there are other games out there.
True, when everyone talk about WoW whether good or bad, is a free publicity for them. The more you talk about WoW the more it makes players that never play or heard of them before wana try it out.
But will Aion be a free publicity for WoW? Guess its better to wait a few months after release, when players start to hit the Abyss for end-game content inside than we will know.
Right now the idea of 3rd faction, though npc, sounds good...
RIP Orc Choppa
You people make this kind of threads and wonder why some people go with "WoW>all" in your game forums, among other things. You really deserve it, you ask for the posters to know that X MMO completely before having any right to comment about it. On the other hand, you have no idea about WoW's design and its type compared to other MMO types.
I think part of the problem was/is it was considered a mmorpg when it was more of a mmo adventure game.
Who cares.
Play WoW if you enjoy it, If not we have a good amount of games that offer different types of gameplay.
When I became tired of WoW I moved on. As an Ex-WoW player I can see these clones a mile away so I never have to waste cash on them.
Lotro, AoC, WAR and Aion are all the same game with minor tweaks.
As for the one WoW fanboi in this thread that keeps talking of sub numbers and Xfire, who gives a shit. Last time I checked my enjoyment in a game was in no way affected by the amount of people playing on other servers, only my own.
PLaying: EvE, Ryzom
Waiting For: Earthrise, Perpetuum
I see evidence of this "spoon feeding" more with a game like DDO than I did with Aion.
Aion is pretty clear on its quest objectives, especially considering the locate feature available. For those who haven't touched Aion, almost any quest objective (NPCs, mobs, etc) can be clicked on in your quest log, you press a "locate" button, and boom - it's marked on your map with a directional indicator in your minimap.
Now take a game like DDO, whose free launch has brought a whole host of people in, and the general channel there reveals a whole class of problems for people coming into the universe: they can't find locations on the unmarked wilderness map, they tend not to explore for secret areas on their own (skeletal mage anyone?), and are shocked when they find out that there are locked doors and chests that they can't get to without a rogue. Further shocked when they realize after rerolling a rogue that they aren't a great solo class, and more constantly disavow the idea that DDO is a group game that they won't be able to solo elite areas past Korthos.
Furthermore, when vets of DDO encourage them to explore on their own by giving hints instead of telling them outright, these new players become indignant, wondering why they won't just outright tell them the answers they seek.
I do think that many of us have become spoiled by the "Accept, Track, Kill, Return" methodology that is most popularly known in World of Warcraft (but was not, and is not even, best done there with its own UI - only with mods like Carbonite and QuestHelper.) Warhammer Online marks all of these quests on the map proper for you with a big red outline of the area in which you'll find your objective. Even Lord of the Rings Online, which was introduced without quest trackers of this sort, now has them.
I think the real reason this has happened though isn't necessarily because of WoW, but because of an attitude of "get me through quests as fast as possible so I can get to end game." Definitely an attitude present in WoW, I admit, but it's been an attitude long in formation, and has just gained steam in the past few years because of the mass of MMO players (many of whom are playing WoW.) Coincidence, correlation even, to an extent, but not causation.
People always play what the want when it comes to games. They don't play what people tell them to. And when it comes to MMOs, people are even more informed and picky. They'll always play whats fun for them and for most people, WOW is the most fun. There're plenty of alternatives out there. Plenty of copies as well. But since 2004, Blizzard has been doing what most people like to see in a MMO. If thats not your thing, thats fine. You don't have to play WOW. You don't have to look at WOW. You only have to respect and understand that its no fluke and everything Blizzard has done has been calculated and planned. VERY different from early MMOs who were just feeling their way through the darkness, appealing to an extremely naive and ignorant playerbase who didn't know any better and had very few choices. Now people have loads of choices, have seen it all and veterans and new players alike CHOOSE WOW. Deal with it and get on with your lives.
As we've seen you can't just copy a game. It doesn't work. OTHER developers have degraded the genre by not doing their part. Not Blizzard. Blizzard continues to try new things that peopel LIKE!!! Thats the important thing. They add what people want to their game. Maybe its not as radical as what some people want, but those people really don't matter. They're too few to listen to. Too few to support a single game let alone an entire genre of games. Something new isn't always good. Something out of the box doesn't make whatever it is fun. Somethign well designed is fun. To be well designed is has to be tested and accepted and BLizzard does that better than any other MMO developer at the moment. Blizzard is one fo the few developers that still cares about making a fun product. Thats why people play.
Its not like WOW is the cheapest game to play. Its not like other MMOs dont' run well on medicer PCs. Plenty do, ESSPECIALLY older MMOs some people like to puff their chests over. See, those MMOs aren't good today and they were good back in 2000 either by TODAYS standards. Thats the catch. TODAYs standards. Just like Doom was good back when there were no FPSs on the market and everything was fresh, it sucks by todays standards. ANy new FPS that is like Doom will suck now. Just like any new MMO trying to copy UO or EQ will suck now. The genre moves on. SOme people need to move along with it. If they don't like the direction, leave or put your money where your mouth is and support MMOs that do try something radical and different. But as we've seen, most people just want to play fun games. FUN games get played.
Theres one thing I dont understand about all this XFire numbers.
Let's use Aion for example, if the game is already live for 6 months or more, not sure, in asia, howcome theres no xfire numbers, they dont use it overthere?
And if they dont use it overthere how can we use xfire to confirm by statistics that wow has 11,6 or whatever players if around 5M or such are asian players?
In 3 months from now, when you present those alleged xfire numbers how can they be acurate if they dont represent the asian market also? But they do however represent the asian wow players because you made several statistics already using xfire to reach the average of 11,6M players... this xfire is a bit odd
(not to mention that for example, the last OB on the past week wasnt counting european players, for some reason the file AionEU wasnt accepted by xfire even manually to detect the game)