Although this debate is a valid one, we need to be careful using language like "dumbed down" or insulting those who play contemporary popular mmorpgs as somehow instant gratification, shallow, kiddies with no imagination. Because that is just eltist BS and adds nothing to the debate. A bit of history: 1. The study or enjoyment of English Literature was once considered dumb, of mass appeal and a sign of the decline of the proper "elite" intellectual who studied latin and the classics and it took ages before the first Eng. Lit dept was formed at University level in the modern world because of this prejudice. 2. The study of cinema was once considered dumb, of mass appeal and a sign of the decline of proper inmtellectualism, which was based on written word fiction. 3. The study of genre fiction and genre movies was once considered dumb, of mass appeal and a sign of the decline of "proper" art, which was based upon literary fiction and art movies. ETC and so on. But here we find the same ridiculous logic, but for games LOL. Games are the definition of mass entertainment and yet here again we have a group wanting to carve out some "elite" clique within that; utterly crass. On a related note, you know the same thing was done in literature btw; the idea of "literary" fiction was in effect created by publishers to sell an idea of superior fiction (as opposed to genre fiction) to idiots who think that reading such fiction makes them elite or more cultured than the dude reading Stephen King. Difference is, this was done by publishers to corner a market; while here, it just some people with delusions of gaming grandeur. Grow up and chill out. Fair, talk about the game mechanics or the play style, but please dont talk in a self-superior eltist way because it just makes u look unintelligent and silly. I love WOW, and I've played most other games and currently play Fallen Earth as my alt game and it bears no relation to do with the quality of my intellect, my ability to persevere, my imagination or my skill at games; it is just what I like to play when I aint reading books. watching films or working. Regards Melmoth ed for spelling
Literature has been dumbed down... look at the current best sellers
cinema has been dumbed down look at yahoo movies.
Besides you love WOW a dumbed down game...
Are you saying mmorpg should be dumbed down to show they are evolving?
It seems you misinterpret challenge for intellect... As you said you love wow, you gain satisfaction from playing a dumbed down game, thats your game style. At times I play BF2 for its simple game play.
Yeah idk i never played EQ but its it possible that it was just good for the time because there was nothing like it? if you went back and played it now would it still be fun?
Although this debate is a valid one, we need to be careful using language like "dumbed down" or insulting those who play contemporary popular mmorpgs as somehow instant gratification, shallow, kiddies with no imagination. Because that is just eltist BS and adds nothing to the debate. A bit of history: 1. The study or enjoyment of English Literature was once considered dumb, of mass appeal and a sign of the decline of the proper "elite" intellectual who studied latin and the classics and it took ages before the first Eng. Lit dept was formed at University level in the modern world because of this prejudice. 2. The study of cinema was once considered dumb, of mass appeal and a sign of the decline of proper inmtellectualism, which was based on written word fiction. 3. The study of genre fiction and genre movies was once considered dumb, of mass appeal and a sign of the decline of "proper" art, which was based upon literary fiction and art movies. ETC and so on. But here we find the same ridiculous logic, but for games LOL. Games are the definition of mass entertainment and yet here again we have a group wanting to carve out some "elite" clique within that; utterly crass. On a related note, you know the same thing was done in literature btw; the idea of "literary" fiction was in effect created by publishers to sell an idea of superior fiction (as opposed to genre fiction) to idiots who think that reading such fiction makes them elite or more cultured than the dude reading Stephen King. Difference is, this was done by publishers to corner a market; while here, it just some people with delusions of gaming grandeur. Grow up and chill out. Fair, talk about the game mechanics or the play style, but please dont talk in a self-superior eltist way because it just makes u look unintelligent and silly. I love WOW, and I've played most other games and currently play Fallen Earth as my alt game and it bears no relation to do with the quality of my intellect, my ability to persevere, my imagination or my skill at games; it is just what I like to play when I aint reading books. watching films or working. Regards Melmoth ed for spelling
Literature has been dumbed down... look at the current best sellers
cinema has been dumbed down look at yahoo movies.
Besides you love WOW a dumbed down game...
Are you saying mmorpg should be dumbed down to show they are evolving?
It seems you misinterpret challenge for intellect... As you said you love wow, you gain satisfaction from playing a dumbed down game, thats your game style. At times I play BF2 for its simple game play.
....
LOL .. WOW is dumbed down? I would call any game with mechanics so complex that you need optimization software to maximize dps "dumb down".
It's been 10 years since the release of Ultima: Online, back in good old 2009 we would have thought that by now games would be on such a level classics like Ultima, Asherons Call, and Everquest, would pale in comparison. However it is now 2009, and most gamers who have played MMO's for any period of time would agree that nothing on the market today can even live up to these original releases. Nostalgia aside, when critically examining these games, it appears as though with each new release the games are being dumbed down; It reminds me alot of the Mike Judge movie: Idiocracy where overtime people became dumber and dumber as technology allowed them more and more luxeries. What I have been wondering is why no games with depth and challenge have been introduced to the market since 2003; The closest we have come is darkfall (don't get me started on that tangent) and in many ways I don't even feel as though, it has lived up to it's potential. Am I the only one who feels like this? Is that why there are no more deep challenging games on the market? What do you guys think?
Actually I think most players will agree that not only do mmorpgs released after those games lived up to those games: They exceeded them.
It's not that games are getting dumbed down, it's that needlessly complications that arised in those games have been removed. The vast majority of gamers do not find having your entire inventory looted by a playerkiller of which you had no chance against the in first place an entertaining, nor is losing many hours of progress trying to get to your body in Everquest. That's not depth, thats punishing gameplay that doesn't add anything to the entertain value of the game whatsoever.
Also it's silly to point towards Aion and call it a grind after you called Everquest a classic. Everquest defined grinding.
Your 123% wrong.
The current games are dev. for the preteen - sub 18 year old market. To be honest if this trend does not change I doubt there will be any games worth playing.
Complications ? do you mean, having to actually use your brain to get quest completed? or worlds being changed by the community? pvp that depends on skills and not gear?
mmo's are canabalizing themselves, if things continue, players will be better off playing AA or a single player rpg....
AION is a crap game though...
Actually according to surveys, the average WoW player is 28. Not preteen sub 18. I'm sorry that your stereotype doesn't exist.
Having to actually use your brain to get quest completed? I'm not sure which genre you played because it isn't mmorpgs. MMORPG quests have never been any more than go kill XX or go find XX.
PVP in modern mmorpg aren't all about gear. Gear is a contributing factor, not the only factor.
If you expect a game of which one of the focuses is character improvement to be stats to be suddenly 100% about player skill in PVP, your expectations are unrealistic and you're playing the wrong genre. If you want a game to be about skill only, you shouldn't be playing an mmorpg.
Also to DarkDmaster:
Go watch a movie if you want to play in a safe environment?
Do I even need to describe how ridiculous that comment is?
When I play a game I want to have fun. I don't want to wait in a queue for hours. I don't want to wait for a spawn for hours. People tend to remember the golden era of MMOs like they really happened. Usually it's a bit picked over with some things conveniently lost. I never played EQ or AC and I played UO for about an hour. That being said, they are not the standard for fun. They may be the standard for what some call hardcore or deep, but being hardcore or deep is not necessarily fun. Today's MMORPG isn't your granddaddy's. Things change, roll with it, or be rolled over. They refine the games for what the game players want. I'd say the majority of MMO players today could give two flying donkeys about the "Classics" Of course these forums are no indication of the majority. It's the self-proclaimed, self-entitled elite that haunt these areas.
Dude, when ever players bring up those older MMOs it's mostly nostalgia, not that they were any good or better than MMOs today, they were just the first of their kind.
What do corpse runs and full loot PvP have to do with being "safe" or having mobs kill you? All you need to make a challenge in any game is play outside of the game's own rule set. If you are level 1 and level 1 mobs are too easy go kill level 3 mobs. Solo a dungeon. Make it to a certain level without dying, etc, etc.
NO, NO, NO....."If a lvl 1 character can kill a lvl 1 mob 100% of the time...its to easy.....If I play a chess game and win, I look for a harder game. I stopped playing Tic Tac toe at the age of 5 and checkers, is for children under the age of 12. If I get to 10th lvl in under 1 hour ( like I do in most games these days) its to easy. I'm looking for a game that takes me 1 day ( 8 hours) to get to 10th lvl. Provieding that game has a level cap of 60. O and FYI in most game today I fight two to 4 levels higher than my character without dying.
Most random players that I run into these days are looking for a handout, need help with same lvl mobs, or can not keep up with me.
If you are going to QUOTE ME...do it right.
I said
"If you like SAFE entertainment watch a movie. I like mobs that can kill me."
I did not say
Also to DarkDmaster: and thats LordDmaster
Go watch a movie if you want to play in a safe environment?
Do I even need to describe how ridiculous that comment is?
So how ridiculous is your quote?
..its a guideline, not a rule, as players we must remember: Its a Game.
Although this debate is a valid one, we need to be careful using language like "dumbed down" or insulting those who play contemporary popular mmorpgs as somehow instant gratification, shallow, kiddies with no imagination. Because that is just eltist BS and adds nothing to the debate. A bit of history: 1. The study or enjoyment of English Literature was once considered dumb, of mass appeal and a sign of the decline of the proper "elite" intellectual who studied latin and the classics and it took ages before the first Eng. Lit dept was formed at University level in the modern world because of this prejudice. 2. The study of cinema was once considered dumb, of mass appeal and a sign of the decline of proper inmtellectualism, which was based on written word fiction. 3. The study of genre fiction and genre movies was once considered dumb, of mass appeal and a sign of the decline of "proper" art, which was based upon literary fiction and art movies. ETC and so on. But here we find the same ridiculous logic, but for games LOL. Games are the definition of mass entertainment and yet here again we have a group wanting to carve out some "elite" clique within that; utterly crass. On a related note, you know the same thing was done in literature btw; the idea of "literary" fiction was in effect created by publishers to sell an idea of superior fiction (as opposed to genre fiction) to idiots who think that reading such fiction makes them elite or more cultured than the dude reading Stephen King. Difference is, this was done by publishers to corner a market; while here, it just some people with delusions of gaming grandeur. Grow up and chill out. Fair, talk about the game mechanics or the play style, but please dont talk in a self-superior eltist way because it just makes u look unintelligent and silly. I love WOW, and I've played most other games and currently play Fallen Earth as my alt game and it bears no relation to do with the quality of my intellect, my ability to persevere, my imagination or my skill at games; it is just what I like to play when I aint reading books. watching films or working. Regards Melmoth ed for spelling
Literature has been dumbed down... look at the current best sellers
cinema has been dumbed down look at yahoo movies.
Besides you love WOW a dumbed down game...
Are you saying mmorpg should be dumbed down to show they are evolving?
It seems you misinterpret challenge for intellect... As you said you love wow, you gain satisfaction from playing a dumbed down game, thats your game style. At times I play BF2 for its simple game play.
....
LOL .. WOW is dumbed down? I would call any game with mechanics so complex that you need optimization software to maximize dps "dumb down".
It's dumbed down. If you don't want to see it and want to think that you earned every item you have (grinded for). Then thats the small world you live in. Others will just laugh at you in pity.
How many delicate flowers have you met in Counterstrike?
I got a case of beer and a chainsaw waiting for me at home after work.
I don't play WoW anymore but arn't they switching the entire game around by removing all stats except numbered base stats? Further dumbing down what I previously thought couldn't get more stupefied.
Its the restaurant equivalent of adding a "happy meal".
Sorry Melmoth, but you have just outlined exaclty why Western civilisation has dumbed down over the past couple of hundred years.
What you see as examples of prejudice against new forms of old disciplines are actually examples of how our civilization increasingly favours the lowest common denominator.
Reality TV is relatively new, do you regard me as prejudiced because I consider it moronic? There was a time when calculators could not be used in exams. This has led to people being worse at mental arithmetic. Do you think this has led to a more competent, intellectually society?
Intelligence can be applied to anything, but when society puts studying the cinema on the same level as studying science you can see how we have devalued the importance of our intelligence.
People always like to think they are superior to their forebears and technological progress can make you believe we are. But is the average person more intelligent than one hundred years ago? If you only compare those who received an education, I doubt it.
People always like to think they are superior to their forebears and technological progress can make you believe we are. But is the average person more intelligent than one hundred years ago? If you only compare those who received an education, I doubt it.
It is about how you define intelligence. Mensa say that it is only based on how good in math you are, others have their own theorys.
But people are doing as many stupid things now as ever so to be honest I think things move very slowly.
But I still agree with the OP, they are making games easier and easier without adding any dept. Instead they put in meaningless features like daily quests and other junk.
What happened with either telling a good story or letting the players create their own good story?
People are not smarter or dumber than 10 years ago (reality soap fans excluded). The problem is that computer games costs a lot more to make now, so the devs spend all their time on making the graphics good and don't care about making the gameplay better.
We need more new companies that makes MMOs, with devs that makes game they themselves would like to play. And we also need to stop using a 40 year RPG as our only RPG influence, it have happened a lot with RPGs since D&D, let games as Shadowrun, Runequest, Warhammer, Vampire, Cyberpunk, Palladium and so on also be an inspiration for the MMOs.
The last 10 years ago it seems like every single (or almost) MMO is based one way or another on Everquest. They have some new features and a slightly different world but they are basicly the same.
And that concept was great but it has been done a 100 times now, time for something new. Focus on fun instead of making another game we already seen with slightly better graphics.
And this is not about evolution, it is about the fact that nothing is fun forever, not even sex and drinking Guiness. Some times you need a change. And that time is due.
I think "dumbed down" goes for the whole genre of games. Remember the nineties? Adventure games that you really had to wrap your head around and strategy games with depth and replayability? Those games are pretty much gone today, and instead we get hack'n'slash and FPS which both cater to a different crowd alt together.
What used to be a bunch of nerds engaging in anti-social behavior have been replaced by the mass market enjoying an accepted past-time entertainment. Games changed because the gamers changed. Unfortunately, the evolution was inevitable.
Idiocracy where overtime people became dumber and dumber as technology allowed them more and more luxeries.
I don't think this is true. I think player's expectations have outpaced the technology, or more accurately they have outpaced the designers' ability to make content, which depends on the technology.
In the days of Ultima Online and EQ, players didn't expect polished content, elaborately crafted boss encounters, and a "living breathing world" to explore. I remember when weekly (or even daily) downtimes for regular maintenance was "normal," and the only new content you got was from an expansion. Both UO and EQ were horribly, horribly imbalanced games. Back then it was insane to expect balance between classes or builds in pretty much all situations (solo, group, raid, pve, pvp). Quests were simple, if the game had them at all, and not these masterpieces of storytelling that needs to permeate every aspect of the game world.
But now players want all these things. So now this is where you have to start from to make a big budget AAA MMO. When WoW launched, Molten Core didn't even work properly. And now games need to have several tiers of raids, all working at launch, to be considered a serious contentender in the market. And this is where technology comes in. MMO servers and clients are still mostly written in C++. Databases are now highly complex affairs in SQL or Oracle. Tools for designers to make content haven't changed a whole lot in the last five years.
The ability to make an MMO is a function of people and time, and there isn't a whole lot of optimization left to happen to improve that equation. Not until it starts to become feasible to use high level programming languages for the bulk of the work, or middle-ware gets to where it needs to be. Once you throw everything that players expect into the bucket, and the fact they will be willing at most to spend $20 a month, there isn't a whole lot of room left for depth.
People need to realize mmo is an addiction. The reason you guys are not finding any fun in any of the new game is because the high is never as high as your 1st MMO....most people are now trying to reach that high that they got from their 1st MMO but its something that will never be reached...most of these games are not bad games...its just not what you want them to be. MMORPG's are the hardest games to develop because they are so massive that there can be on thing that turns people away. I use to be like the people that bash all new games, but when i realized that iam never going to feel the way i did about FFIX in any other game.....even 14! This has help me to enjoy MMO's more than i use to instead of being so emo.
There is some truth to your MMO addiction observation but that fails to explain why so many older MMO players wish for the deeper content and challenge they experienced with their 2nd, 3rd of 4th MMOs. My 3rd MMO is actually my favorite not the first I ever played.
There is a definited line in the sand that WOW crossed that brought the MMO market into the mainstream, they took the good parts of all previous MMOs and polished them and reworked them to make them easy to use and understand. The problem with mainstream MMOs is everything is like McDonalds, it is a taste that appeals to the largest segment of the population. The food is greasy, sugary, and served up in a minute.
McDonalds may be the single most success restaurant in the world but it is rarely confused as having the best food and certainly doesn't offer anything for people with a more adult palette.
What we need is for some Devs to create a Gourmet MMO that specializes in slow cooked food with rich and complex tastes. I'd rather spend hours playing an MMO for the chance to have a full turkey dinner than being guaranteed to have Instanced McNuggets and fries.
Love your post, I think it sums up the feel of alot of people.
Sorry gota agree with the op here, even with EQ being a bit of a grind and having to find my corpse it was more rewarding and social back in the day than any of the newer mmo's. Though the more modern EQ has removed most of the functions that were needless and made finding your corpse a damn sight easier. EXP is less hard to obtain so even EQ has modernized to keep up with the trend, but it somehow stayed EQ.
As to dumbing down, I think Howard was right when he said all empires eventually decline and degenerate backward until they fall apart a little bit. Tech has made this less possible but we are no where near the people we once were in many ways.
I think the innovation needs to be put into the social aspects of these games..
the leveling soloing casual elements are all streamline now and a vast improvment on EQs age
however moden games lack any real need to socialise with people at all ..in the end the reason i remained in EQ for years..it wasnt because the game was SUPER FUn to play and i couldnt get enough..but it was because of the social links guilds and friends you made at the time..that keeps you logging back in and that makes a game a classic...
now the issue with launched games is "content" where is the content because we fly through them ..they cant develop content fast enough for the hardcore soloer so what we need please MMO gods is "Social innovation"
It's been 10 years since the release of Ultima: Online, back in good old 2009 we would have thought that by now games would be on such a level classics like Ultima, Asherons Call, and Everquest, would pale in comparison. However it is now 2009, and most gamers who have played MMO's for any period of time would agree that nothing on the market today can even live up to these original releases. Nostalgia aside, when critically examining these games, it appears as though with each new release the games are being dumbed down; It reminds me alot of the Mike Judge movie: Idiocracy where overtime people became dumber and dumber as technology allowed them more and more luxeries. What I have been wondering is why no games with depth and challenge have been introduced to the market since 2003; The closest we have come is darkfall (don't get me started on that tangent) and in many ways I don't even feel as though, it has lived up to it's potential. Am I the only one who feels like this? Is that why there are no more deep challenging games on the market? What do you guys think?
Actually I think most players will agree that not only do mmorpgs released after those games lived up to those games: They exceeded them.
It's not that games are getting dumbed down, it's that needlessly complications that arised in those games have been removed. The vast majority of gamers do not find having your entire inventory looted by a playerkiller of which you had no chance against the in first place an entertaining, nor is losing many hours of progress trying to get to your body in Everquest. That's not depth, thats punishing gameplay that doesn't add anything to the entertain value of the game whatsoever.
Also it's silly to point towards Aion and call it a grind after you called Everquest a classic. Everquest defined grinding.
Your 123% wrong.
The current games are dev. for the preteen - sub 18 year old market. To be honest if this trend does not change I doubt there will be any games worth playing.
Complications ? do you mean, having to actually use your brain to get quest completed? or worlds being changed by the community? pvp that depends on skills and not gear?
mmo's are canabalizing themselves, if things continue, players will be better off playing AA or a single player rpg....
AION is a crap game though...
Actually according to surveys, the average WoW player is 28. Not preteen sub 18. I'm sorry that your stereotype doesn't exist.
Having to actually use your brain to get quest completed? I'm not sure which genre you played because it isn't mmorpgs. MMORPG quests have never been any more than go kill XX or go find XX.
PVP in modern mmorpg aren't all about gear. Gear is a contributing factor, not the only factor.
If you expect a game of which one of the focuses is character improvement to be stats to be suddenly 100% about player skill in PVP, your expectations are unrealistic and you're playing the wrong genre. If you want a game to be about skill only, you shouldn't be playing an mmorpg.
Also to DarkDmaster:
Go watch a movie if you want to play in a safe environment?
Do I even need to describe how ridiculous that comment is?
the quest part... UO and AC...
And you are dead wrong, almost all current 2005+ MMO's are gear based PVP. As for the word modern, it can be used to include the 90's....
Not to mention older MMO'S were skill based... hence you raise your skills in diff. crafts,magic's or melee.
What genre have you been playing? you are the classic example of the type who is sucked into these dumb downed games...
People need to realize mmo is an addiction. The reason you guys are not finding any fun in any of the new game is because the high is never as high as your 1st MMO....most people are now trying to reach that high that they got from their 1st MMO but its something that will never be reached...most of these games are not bad games...its just not what you want them to be. MMORPG's are the hardest games to develop because they are so massive that there can be on thing that turns people away. I use to be like the people that bash all new games, but when i realized that iam never going to feel the way i did about FFIX in any other game.....even 14! This has help me to enjoy MMO's more than i use to instead of being so emo.
There is some truth to your MMO addiction observation but that fails to explain why so many older MMO players wish for the deeper content and challenge they experienced with their 2nd, 3rd of 4th MMOs. My 3rd MMO is actually my favorite not the first I ever played.
There is a definited line in the sand that WOW crossed that brought the MMO market into the mainstream, they took the good parts of all previous MMOs and polished them and reworked them to make them easy to use and understand. The problem with mainstream MMOs is everything is like McDonalds, it is a taste that appeals to the largest segment of the population. The food is greasy, sugary, and served up in a minute.
McDonalds may be the single most success restaurant in the world but it is rarely confused as having the best food and certainly doesn't offer anything for people with a more adult palette.
What we need is for some Devs to create a Gourmet MMO that specializes in slow cooked food with rich and complex tastes. I'd rather spend hours playing an MMO for the chance to have a full turkey dinner than being guaranteed to have Instanced McNuggets and fries.
Love your post, I think it sums up the feel of alot of people.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLO
Thank you....I had to stop and read this twice...I liked it so much.
..its a guideline, not a rule, as players we must remember: Its a Game.
What do corpse runs and full loot PvP have to do with being "safe" or having mobs kill you? All you need to make a challenge in any game is play outside of the game's own rule set. If you are level 1 and level 1 mobs are too easy go kill level 3 mobs. Solo a dungeon. Make it to a certain level without dying, etc, etc.
Ok so I have played everything from EQ to Wow and Lotro, and I have to say, I enjoyed leveling in WoW but EQ always held my attention a little better. In games like EQ you had to watch yourself or you would get hammered, you had to play to your classes strengths and avoid extremely dangerous areas until you were of level to deal with the mobs there. In WoW you could be a level 10 and go anywhere, as long as you stayed on the road you were safe, leveling was quick and easy, 3 and 4 level difference in mobs just means better drops, in Lotro its even worse than WoW, 5 lvl difference.. lol give me a half dozen, elites 4-5 levels higher are not even a match. Where is the challenge in these games? In EQ lvl 40 meant something, it meant you had played a game hard and suceded in making it, In WoW lvl 40 is given to you like a christmas present wraped in a shiney little ribbon, In Lotro, they forgot the ribbon and give it to you on a platter with potatoes and carrots. When I play a game I want at least a semblance of a challenge, make it difficult for me to kill an even level elite, make even level mobs easy at one on one but if I get two, hurt me. Make lvl 40 a challenge again, shit make 20 a challenge, weed out those who only want to chat and make themselves look pretty in new armor, give me a mmorpg that requires an IQ over that of a merlock to succed at.
In games like Conan, it was close, the challenges offered there were a nice change, they didn't make it much harder than WoW or Lotro but they made it different, that was cool. But ultimatly even Conan lost my attention because of the lack of new material and experiences. Are we asking for too much in a game? One that can hold our attention like WoW, that is a challenge like EQ, and has the inventivness of Conan?
As for Full loot PvP, why not, strip down to your skivies and fight like a man if you don't want your goodies taken by the boogy man, PvP is your choice, make it interesting. and As far as corpse runs, yeah I loved it in EQ, it made Dieing mean something you wanted to avoid at all costs. In games like Lotro I went my first 17 lvls without getting killed, I made it almost to 40 before I fell again and then to 52 before another, corpse runs? Even if games like WoW and Lotro had corpse runs you would run them so little they wouldn't bother you, how could you get tired of something you only do once every 10-12 levels?
Actually I think most players will agree that not only do mmorpgs released after those games lived up to those games: They exceeded them. It's not that games are getting dumbed down, it's that needlessly complications that arised in those games have been removed. The vast majority of gamers do not find having your entire inventory looted by a playerkiller of which you had no chance against the in first place an entertaining, nor is losing many hours of progress trying to get to your body in Everquest. That's not depth, thats punishing gameplay that doesn't add anything to the entertain value of the game whatsoever. Also it's silly to point towards Aion and call it a grind after you called Everquest a classic. Everquest defined grinding.
That is just your opinion, and I strongly disagree. Some of the most exciting times I had in Everquest was trying to get my corpse without getting killed again. Especially in the gnoll caves outside of Qeynos. That was heart pounding. THAT is the very sort of thing that got me hooked.
It's been 10 years since the release of Ultima: Online, back in good old 2009 we would have thought that by now games would be on such a level classics like Ultima, Asherons Call, and Everquest, would pale in comparison. However it is now 2009, and most gamers who have played MMO's for any period of time would agree that nothing on the market today can even live up to these original releases. Nostalgia aside, when critically examining these games, it appears as though with each new release the games are being dumbed down; It reminds me alot of the Mike Judge movie: Idiocracy where overtime people became dumber and dumber as technology allowed them more and more luxeries. What I have been wondering is why no games with depth and challenge have been introduced to the market since 2003; The closest we have come is darkfall (don't get me started on that tangent) and in many ways I don't even feel as though, it has lived up to it's potential. Am I the only one who feels like this? Is that why there are no more deep challenging games on the market? What do you guys think?
Actually I think most players will agree that not only do mmorpgs released after those games lived up to those games: They exceeded them.
It's not that games are getting dumbed down, it's that needlessly complications that arised in those games have been removed. The vast majority of gamers do not find having your entire inventory looted by a playerkiller of which you had no chance against the in first place an entertaining, nor is losing many hours of progress trying to get to your body in Everquest. That's not depth, thats punishing gameplay that doesn't add anything to the entertain value of the game whatsoever.
Also it's silly to point towards Aion and call it a grind after you called Everquest a classic. Everquest defined grinding.
Your 123% wrong.
The current games are dev. for the preteen - sub 18 year old market. To be honest if this trend does not change I doubt there will be any games worth playing.
Complications ? do you mean, having to actually use your brain to get quest completed? or worlds being changed by the community? pvp that depends on skills and not gear?
mmo's are canabalizing themselves, if things continue, players will be better off playing AA or a single player rpg....
AION is a crap game though...
Actually according to surveys, the average WoW player is 28. Not preteen sub 18. I'm sorry that your stereotype doesn't exist.
Having to actually use your brain to get quest completed? I'm not sure which genre you played because it isn't mmorpgs. MMORPG quests have never been any more than go kill XX or go find XX.
PVP in modern mmorpg aren't all about gear. Gear is a contributing factor, not the only factor.
If you expect a game of which one of the focuses is character improvement to be stats to be suddenly 100% about player skill in PVP, your expectations are unrealistic and you're playing the wrong genre. If you want a game to be about skill only, you shouldn't be playing an mmorpg.
Also to DarkDmaster:
Go watch a movie if you want to play in a safe environment?
Do I even need to describe how ridiculous that comment is?
the quest part... UO and AC...
And you are dead wrong, almost all current 2005+ MMO's are gear based PVP. As for the word modern, it can be used to include the 90's....
Not to mention older MMO'S were skill based... hence you raise your skills in diff. crafts,magic's or melee.
What genre have you been playing? you are the classic example of the type who is sucked into these dumb downed games...
ALL mmorpgs have Go find XX or go kill XX quests or they barely have any quests.
I said it before and i'll say it again: Almost all current mmorpgs have equipment be a contributing factor, not the only factor. If you're going to sit back and use only auto attack and 1 or 2 skills in WoW or WAR you're going to get your ass kicked.
Older MMO's were skill based in the sense that it used skill points instead of levels. The actual combat had gear just as much a factor as in modern mmorpgs.
You're the classic example of a person who is blinded by nostalgia. See what I did there?
@rutaq ;Your MCdonalds anology is a popular one but it's also a deeply flawed one.
MCdonalds became this big because it had a good quality - price balance. It food was not restaurant material, but that's why you paid less, it came in at the right place at the right time and their restaurants are everywhere.
This isn't the case with World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft has the same price as every other mmorpg and it's also by far the highest quality mmorpg.
Comments
Literature has been dumbed down... look at the current best sellers
cinema has been dumbed down look at yahoo movies.
Besides you love WOW a dumbed down game...
Are you saying mmorpg should be dumbed down to show they are evolving?
It seems you misinterpret challenge for intellect... As you said you love wow, you gain satisfaction from playing a dumbed down game, thats your game style. At times I play BF2 for its simple game play.
....
This
Literature has been dumbed down... look at the current best sellers
cinema has been dumbed down look at yahoo movies.
Besides you love WOW a dumbed down game...
Are you saying mmorpg should be dumbed down to show they are evolving?
It seems you misinterpret challenge for intellect... As you said you love wow, you gain satisfaction from playing a dumbed down game, thats your game style. At times I play BF2 for its simple game play.
....
LOL .. WOW is dumbed down? I would call any game with mechanics so complex that you need optimization software to maximize dps "dumb down".
Actually I think most players will agree that not only do mmorpgs released after those games lived up to those games: They exceeded them.
It's not that games are getting dumbed down, it's that needlessly complications that arised in those games have been removed. The vast majority of gamers do not find having your entire inventory looted by a playerkiller of which you had no chance against the in first place an entertaining, nor is losing many hours of progress trying to get to your body in Everquest. That's not depth, thats punishing gameplay that doesn't add anything to the entertain value of the game whatsoever.
Also it's silly to point towards Aion and call it a grind after you called Everquest a classic. Everquest defined grinding.
Your 123% wrong.
The current games are dev. for the preteen - sub 18 year old market. To be honest if this trend does not change I doubt there will be any games worth playing.
Complications ? do you mean, having to actually use your brain to get quest completed? or worlds being changed by the community? pvp that depends on skills and not gear?
mmo's are canabalizing themselves, if things continue, players will be better off playing AA or a single player rpg....
AION is a crap game though...
Actually according to surveys, the average WoW player is 28. Not preteen sub 18. I'm sorry that your stereotype doesn't exist.
Having to actually use your brain to get quest completed? I'm not sure which genre you played because it isn't mmorpgs. MMORPG quests have never been any more than go kill XX or go find XX.
PVP in modern mmorpg aren't all about gear. Gear is a contributing factor, not the only factor.
If you expect a game of which one of the focuses is character improvement to be stats to be suddenly 100% about player skill in PVP, your expectations are unrealistic and you're playing the wrong genre. If you want a game to be about skill only, you shouldn't be playing an mmorpg.
Also to DarkDmaster:
Go watch a movie if you want to play in a safe environment?
Do I even need to describe how ridiculous that comment is?
Dude, when ever players bring up those older MMOs it's mostly nostalgia, not that they were any good or better than MMOs today, they were just the first of their kind.
lol wow is dumbed down by add-on remove add-on and wow is a great game
NO, NO, NO....."If a lvl 1 character can kill a lvl 1 mob 100% of the time...its to easy.....If I play a chess game and win, I look for a harder game. I stopped playing Tic Tac toe at the age of 5 and checkers, is for children under the age of 12. If I get to 10th lvl in under 1 hour ( like I do in most games these days) its to easy. I'm looking for a game that takes me 1 day ( 8 hours) to get to 10th lvl. Provieding that game has a level cap of 60. O and FYI in most game today I fight two to 4 levels higher than my character without dying.
Most random players that I run into these days are looking for a handout, need help with same lvl mobs, or can not keep up with me.
If you are going to QUOTE ME...do it right.
I said
"If you like SAFE entertainment watch a movie. I like mobs that can kill me."
I did not say
Also to DarkDmaster: and thats LordDmaster
Go watch a movie if you want to play in a safe environment?
Do I even need to describe how ridiculous that comment is?
So how ridiculous is your quote?
..its a guideline, not a rule, as players we must remember: Its a Game.
Literature has been dumbed down... look at the current best sellers
cinema has been dumbed down look at yahoo movies.
Besides you love WOW a dumbed down game...
Are you saying mmorpg should be dumbed down to show they are evolving?
It seems you misinterpret challenge for intellect... As you said you love wow, you gain satisfaction from playing a dumbed down game, thats your game style. At times I play BF2 for its simple game play.
....
LOL .. WOW is dumbed down? I would call any game with mechanics so complex that you need optimization software to maximize dps "dumb down".
It's dumbed down. If you don't want to see it and want to think that you earned every item you have (grinded for). Then thats the small world you live in. Others will just laugh at you in pity.
How many delicate flowers have you met in Counterstrike?
I got a case of beer and a chainsaw waiting for me at home after work.
I don't play WoW anymore but arn't they switching the entire game around by removing all stats except numbered base stats? Further dumbing down what I previously thought couldn't get more stupefied.
Its the restaurant equivalent of adding a "happy meal".
Sorry Melmoth, but you have just outlined exaclty why Western civilisation has dumbed down over the past couple of hundred years.
What you see as examples of prejudice against new forms of old disciplines are actually examples of how our civilization increasingly favours the lowest common denominator.
Reality TV is relatively new, do you regard me as prejudiced because I consider it moronic? There was a time when calculators could not be used in exams. This has led to people being worse at mental arithmetic. Do you think this has led to a more competent, intellectually society?
Intelligence can be applied to anything, but when society puts studying the cinema on the same level as studying science you can see how we have devalued the importance of our intelligence.
People always like to think they are superior to their forebears and technological progress can make you believe we are. But is the average person more intelligent than one hundred years ago? If you only compare those who received an education, I doubt it.
It is about how you define intelligence. Mensa say that it is only based on how good in math you are, others have their own theorys.
But people are doing as many stupid things now as ever so to be honest I think things move very slowly.
But I still agree with the OP, they are making games easier and easier without adding any dept. Instead they put in meaningless features like daily quests and other junk.
What happened with either telling a good story or letting the players create their own good story?
People are not smarter or dumber than 10 years ago (reality soap fans excluded). The problem is that computer games costs a lot more to make now, so the devs spend all their time on making the graphics good and don't care about making the gameplay better.
We need more new companies that makes MMOs, with devs that makes game they themselves would like to play. And we also need to stop using a 40 year RPG as our only RPG influence, it have happened a lot with RPGs since D&D, let games as Shadowrun, Runequest, Warhammer, Vampire, Cyberpunk, Palladium and so on also be an inspiration for the MMOs.
The last 10 years ago it seems like every single (or almost) MMO is based one way or another on Everquest. They have some new features and a slightly different world but they are basicly the same.
And that concept was great but it has been done a 100 times now, time for something new. Focus on fun instead of making another game we already seen with slightly better graphics.
And this is not about evolution, it is about the fact that nothing is fun forever, not even sex and drinking Guiness. Some times you need a change. And that time is due.
I think "dumbed down" goes for the whole genre of games. Remember the nineties? Adventure games that you really had to wrap your head around and strategy games with depth and replayability? Those games are pretty much gone today, and instead we get hack'n'slash and FPS which both cater to a different crowd alt together.
What used to be a bunch of nerds engaging in anti-social behavior have been replaced by the mass market enjoying an accepted past-time entertainment. Games changed because the gamers changed. Unfortunately, the evolution was inevitable.
I don't think this is true. I think player's expectations have outpaced the technology, or more accurately they have outpaced the designers' ability to make content, which depends on the technology.
In the days of Ultima Online and EQ, players didn't expect polished content, elaborately crafted boss encounters, and a "living breathing world" to explore. I remember when weekly (or even daily) downtimes for regular maintenance was "normal," and the only new content you got was from an expansion. Both UO and EQ were horribly, horribly imbalanced games. Back then it was insane to expect balance between classes or builds in pretty much all situations (solo, group, raid, pve, pvp). Quests were simple, if the game had them at all, and not these masterpieces of storytelling that needs to permeate every aspect of the game world.
But now players want all these things. So now this is where you have to start from to make a big budget AAA MMO. When WoW launched, Molten Core didn't even work properly. And now games need to have several tiers of raids, all working at launch, to be considered a serious contentender in the market. And this is where technology comes in. MMO servers and clients are still mostly written in C++. Databases are now highly complex affairs in SQL or Oracle. Tools for designers to make content haven't changed a whole lot in the last five years.
The ability to make an MMO is a function of people and time, and there isn't a whole lot of optimization left to happen to improve that equation. Not until it starts to become feasible to use high level programming languages for the bulk of the work, or middle-ware gets to where it needs to be. Once you throw everything that players expect into the bucket, and the fact they will be willing at most to spend $20 a month, there isn't a whole lot of room left for depth.
There is some truth to your MMO addiction observation but that fails to explain why so many older MMO players wish for the deeper content and challenge they experienced with their 2nd, 3rd of 4th MMOs. My 3rd MMO is actually my favorite not the first I ever played.
There is a definited line in the sand that WOW crossed that brought the MMO market into the mainstream, they took the good parts of all previous MMOs and polished them and reworked them to make them easy to use and understand. The problem with mainstream MMOs is everything is like McDonalds, it is a taste that appeals to the largest segment of the population. The food is greasy, sugary, and served up in a minute.
McDonalds may be the single most success restaurant in the world but it is rarely confused as having the best food and certainly doesn't offer anything for people with a more adult palette.
What we need is for some Devs to create a Gourmet MMO that specializes in slow cooked food with rich and complex tastes. I'd rather spend hours playing an MMO for the chance to have a full turkey dinner than being guaranteed to have Instanced McNuggets and fries.
Love your post, I think it sums up the feel of alot of people.
I spent my 2008 on WOW
and 2009 on WOW and MWO
Maybe next yest will be WOW, Diablo 3 and MWO2!
Hope they would be released in 2010
Sounds like 99% in these forums never even have played mmos. Just whining over anything there is..
Starved?
http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=118569
Ok For those whining, Be courageous and watch
You're only starved if you are too stubborn to look. In a few years time people will QQ and say how stupid we were ...
Want a real mmorpg? Play WOW with experience turned off mode and be Pve_Pvp King at any level without a rat race.
Sorry gota agree with the op here, even with EQ being a bit of a grind and having to find my corpse it was more rewarding and social back in the day than any of the newer mmo's. Though the more modern EQ has removed most of the functions that were needless and made finding your corpse a damn sight easier. EXP is less hard to obtain so even EQ has modernized to keep up with the trend, but it somehow stayed EQ.
As to dumbing down, I think Howard was right when he said all empires eventually decline and degenerate backward until they fall apart a little bit. Tech has made this less possible but we are no where near the people we once were in many ways.
I think the innovation needs to be put into the social aspects of these games..
the leveling soloing casual elements are all streamline now and a vast improvment on EQs age
however moden games lack any real need to socialise with people at all ..in the end the reason i remained in EQ for years..it wasnt because the game was SUPER FUn to play and i couldnt get enough..but it was because of the social links guilds and friends you made at the time..that keeps you logging back in and that makes a game a classic...
now the issue with launched games is "content" where is the content because we fly through them ..they cant develop content fast enough for the hardcore soloer so what we need please MMO gods is "Social innovation"
Actually I think most players will agree that not only do mmorpgs released after those games lived up to those games: They exceeded them.
It's not that games are getting dumbed down, it's that needlessly complications that arised in those games have been removed. The vast majority of gamers do not find having your entire inventory looted by a playerkiller of which you had no chance against the in first place an entertaining, nor is losing many hours of progress trying to get to your body in Everquest. That's not depth, thats punishing gameplay that doesn't add anything to the entertain value of the game whatsoever.
Also it's silly to point towards Aion and call it a grind after you called Everquest a classic. Everquest defined grinding.
Your 123% wrong.
The current games are dev. for the preteen - sub 18 year old market. To be honest if this trend does not change I doubt there will be any games worth playing.
Complications ? do you mean, having to actually use your brain to get quest completed? or worlds being changed by the community? pvp that depends on skills and not gear?
mmo's are canabalizing themselves, if things continue, players will be better off playing AA or a single player rpg....
AION is a crap game though...
Actually according to surveys, the average WoW player is 28. Not preteen sub 18. I'm sorry that your stereotype doesn't exist.
Having to actually use your brain to get quest completed? I'm not sure which genre you played because it isn't mmorpgs. MMORPG quests have never been any more than go kill XX or go find XX.
PVP in modern mmorpg aren't all about gear. Gear is a contributing factor, not the only factor.
If you expect a game of which one of the focuses is character improvement to be stats to be suddenly 100% about player skill in PVP, your expectations are unrealistic and you're playing the wrong genre. If you want a game to be about skill only, you shouldn't be playing an mmorpg.
Also to DarkDmaster:
Go watch a movie if you want to play in a safe environment?
Do I even need to describe how ridiculous that comment is?
the quest part... UO and AC...
And you are dead wrong, almost all current 2005+ MMO's are gear based PVP. As for the word modern, it can be used to include the 90's....
Not to mention older MMO'S were skill based... hence you raise your skills in diff. crafts,magic's or melee.
What genre have you been playing? you are the classic example of the type who is sucked into these dumb downed games...
There is some truth to your MMO addiction observation but that fails to explain why so many older MMO players wish for the deeper content and challenge they experienced with their 2nd, 3rd of 4th MMOs. My 3rd MMO is actually my favorite not the first I ever played.
There is a definited line in the sand that WOW crossed that brought the MMO market into the mainstream, they took the good parts of all previous MMOs and polished them and reworked them to make them easy to use and understand. The problem with mainstream MMOs is everything is like McDonalds, it is a taste that appeals to the largest segment of the population. The food is greasy, sugary, and served up in a minute.
McDonalds may be the single most success restaurant in the world but it is rarely confused as having the best food and certainly doesn't offer anything for people with a more adult palette.
What we need is for some Devs to create a Gourmet MMO that specializes in slow cooked food with rich and complex tastes. I'd rather spend hours playing an MMO for the chance to have a full turkey dinner than being guaranteed to have Instanced McNuggets and fries.
Love your post, I think it sums up the feel of alot of people.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLO
Thank you....I had to stop and read this twice...I liked it so much.
..its a guideline, not a rule, as players we must remember: Its a Game.
Ok so I have played everything from EQ to Wow and Lotro, and I have to say, I enjoyed leveling in WoW but EQ always held my attention a little better. In games like EQ you had to watch yourself or you would get hammered, you had to play to your classes strengths and avoid extremely dangerous areas until you were of level to deal with the mobs there. In WoW you could be a level 10 and go anywhere, as long as you stayed on the road you were safe, leveling was quick and easy, 3 and 4 level difference in mobs just means better drops, in Lotro its even worse than WoW, 5 lvl difference.. lol give me a half dozen, elites 4-5 levels higher are not even a match. Where is the challenge in these games? In EQ lvl 40 meant something, it meant you had played a game hard and suceded in making it, In WoW lvl 40 is given to you like a christmas present wraped in a shiney little ribbon, In Lotro, they forgot the ribbon and give it to you on a platter with potatoes and carrots. When I play a game I want at least a semblance of a challenge, make it difficult for me to kill an even level elite, make even level mobs easy at one on one but if I get two, hurt me. Make lvl 40 a challenge again, shit make 20 a challenge, weed out those who only want to chat and make themselves look pretty in new armor, give me a mmorpg that requires an IQ over that of a merlock to succed at.
In games like Conan, it was close, the challenges offered there were a nice change, they didn't make it much harder than WoW or Lotro but they made it different, that was cool. But ultimatly even Conan lost my attention because of the lack of new material and experiences. Are we asking for too much in a game? One that can hold our attention like WoW, that is a challenge like EQ, and has the inventivness of Conan?
As for Full loot PvP, why not, strip down to your skivies and fight like a man if you don't want your goodies taken by the boogy man, PvP is your choice, make it interesting. and As far as corpse runs, yeah I loved it in EQ, it made Dieing mean something you wanted to avoid at all costs. In games like Lotro I went my first 17 lvls without getting killed, I made it almost to 40 before I fell again and then to 52 before another, corpse runs? Even if games like WoW and Lotro had corpse runs you would run them so little they wouldn't bother you, how could you get tired of something you only do once every 10-12 levels?
That is just your opinion, and I strongly disagree. Some of the most exciting times I had in Everquest was trying to get my corpse without getting killed again. Especially in the gnoll caves outside of Qeynos. That was heart pounding. THAT is the very sort of thing that got me hooked.
A tiny mind is a tidy mind...
Hopefully mortal online will satisfy the feeling of an old MMO vet.
Actually I think most players will agree that not only do mmorpgs released after those games lived up to those games: They exceeded them.
It's not that games are getting dumbed down, it's that needlessly complications that arised in those games have been removed. The vast majority of gamers do not find having your entire inventory looted by a playerkiller of which you had no chance against the in first place an entertaining, nor is losing many hours of progress trying to get to your body in Everquest. That's not depth, thats punishing gameplay that doesn't add anything to the entertain value of the game whatsoever.
Also it's silly to point towards Aion and call it a grind after you called Everquest a classic. Everquest defined grinding.
Your 123% wrong.
The current games are dev. for the preteen - sub 18 year old market. To be honest if this trend does not change I doubt there will be any games worth playing.
Complications ? do you mean, having to actually use your brain to get quest completed? or worlds being changed by the community? pvp that depends on skills and not gear?
mmo's are canabalizing themselves, if things continue, players will be better off playing AA or a single player rpg....
AION is a crap game though...
Actually according to surveys, the average WoW player is 28. Not preteen sub 18. I'm sorry that your stereotype doesn't exist.
Having to actually use your brain to get quest completed? I'm not sure which genre you played because it isn't mmorpgs. MMORPG quests have never been any more than go kill XX or go find XX.
PVP in modern mmorpg aren't all about gear. Gear is a contributing factor, not the only factor.
If you expect a game of which one of the focuses is character improvement to be stats to be suddenly 100% about player skill in PVP, your expectations are unrealistic and you're playing the wrong genre. If you want a game to be about skill only, you shouldn't be playing an mmorpg.
Also to DarkDmaster:
Go watch a movie if you want to play in a safe environment?
Do I even need to describe how ridiculous that comment is?
the quest part... UO and AC...
And you are dead wrong, almost all current 2005+ MMO's are gear based PVP. As for the word modern, it can be used to include the 90's....
Not to mention older MMO'S were skill based... hence you raise your skills in diff. crafts,magic's or melee.
What genre have you been playing? you are the classic example of the type who is sucked into these dumb downed games...
ALL mmorpgs have Go find XX or go kill XX quests or they barely have any quests.
I said it before and i'll say it again: Almost all current mmorpgs have equipment be a contributing factor, not the only factor. If you're going to sit back and use only auto attack and 1 or 2 skills in WoW or WAR you're going to get your ass kicked.
Older MMO's were skill based in the sense that it used skill points instead of levels. The actual combat had gear just as much a factor as in modern mmorpgs.
You're the classic example of a person who is blinded by nostalgia. See what I did there?
@rutaq ;Your MCdonalds anology is a popular one but it's also a deeply flawed one.
MCdonalds became this big because it had a good quality - price balance. It food was not restaurant material, but that's why you paid less, it came in at the right place at the right time and their restaurants are everywhere.
This isn't the case with World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft has the same price as every other mmorpg and it's also by far the highest quality mmorpg.