Give me the fun, structured content of a AAA themepark MMO. a la WOW
Give me the wide, open world of a sandbox MMO. a la DFO, MO or EVE
Give me RvR with more than 2 factions. a la DAOC
Give me deep crafting. a la SWG pre NGE
Give me non-combat content and mechanics that support Roleplay. - a la Second Life
Now give me all that in one game.
<nods>
If someone could figure out a way to incorporate all that for under 250M USD it would be a truely amazing game, but would probably cost us all 29.99/mo and a 99.00 box fee.
I'd pay it. It'd actually save me money; I'm paying for WoW, EVE and FE atm.
Some of your requests are mutually exclusive though, the freedom of a true sandbox game cannot exist with themepark design. Now, if you meant large open world like VG or DFO had, then you might have a chance.
Hngh. I dislike the term true sandbox; it has connotations of elitism and is an ill-defined and subjective term at best. I could imagine an open-world game with embedded themepark content, player housing and territory control. I'm curious; which sandbox elements do you think would be impossible in such a game?
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
Get rid of chat. After that, all MMOs will be more tolerable.
QFT! One of the big changes was the introduction of serverwide chat features.... lose them and make folks have to communicate via in game mail or face to pixelated face.
I'll start like this... my favorite MMO ever was Ultima Online with my second being SWG pre-cu.
Now that said the title of the thread seems ironic. In the end its about what someone enjoyed in MMO's as opposed to MMO's having lost something. Tho I may agree with the idea that MMO's are no captivating to me anymore... there are indeed more people playing now than ever.
The other side of that coin does have some reality to it tho. So many companies are not going to design "for that crowd" because they don't want to have only 300 or 400 thousand subs... Well how many new MMO's in the last two years have actually even retained much over 100,000...
At some point someone will design the MMO the OP wants... its more of a question as to whether they will still be gaming by then. I mean at some point as X more games fail to grab the "wow crowd" someone will get the clue or there won't be many companies making MMO's (due to the epic amount of wasted development dollars and investors pulling away from epic fail investments).
Originally posted by kiddyno071 QFT! One of the big changes was the introduction of serverwide chat features.... lose them and make folks have to communicate via in game mail or face to pixelated face.
I think it would be enough to do as Lineage, just allow people of a certain level to be able to chat in the OCC.
Of course leveling there actually took some effort so it might not be enough today.
i like chat at least in a zone wide (iow, large area) capacity. Moving from EQ (which had zone chat) to DAOC (no zone chat) made it seem like i was playing alone.
Being in a group, and a guild, even when the guild is part of an allegiance (or whatever they called them in DAOC) is not enough.
It doesn't need to be server wide, but at least have some sort of large coverage.
Force so called Hardcore gamers into Gitmo like facilities, and enjoy the genres evolution without having to listen to a bunch of fucks cry because their e-peen has gone limp.
If WoW never would have been released mmorpg companies would still be making exciting and advanced challangeing games instead of trying to make another kind of silver platter mmorpg. Just look at all the releases before WoW hit the market and all the ones released after! Why the F do they try to remake that which people dont want?
Originally posted by aranha If WoW never would have been released mmorpg companies would still be making exciting and advanced challangeing games instead of trying to make another kind of silver platter mmorpg.
If WoW never introduced the vast majority of today's MMO players to the genre in the first place it wouldn't have convinced other companies that they struck gold. WoW is an anomaly, one that was fueled by 1:1 contact between players in real life to induct friends into the game, friends that were clowning them on it years ago. Anyone who played WoW as their first game (and that's MILLIONS of people), it's because the game had a decent backing IP, and everyone enslaved their best friends in a domino effect.
It's never going to happen again, because MMO's made it big with WoW as the posterchild... and everyone bases their expectations on their first game. God knows I do, and I come from UO/SWG - that says everything about my preferences. WoW's structure will be around for a long time because it's what the new majority craves, it doesn't mean all these game's need to copy WoW's gameplay.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4 Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
I would get rid of number crunching. I would ban terms like DPS and gear check. I would not allow any Z's in characters names. Unless it was appropriate of course. I would also hit the way back button so that I never again had to look at some donkey bringing up stock prices and talking about shareholders when referring to a game. In fact, I would hit my annihilate button and vaporize about 90% of the gamers that are too preoccupied with the price of shares or how many more .0001 of a point of damage is done and just game with the people that want to have fun.
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
Feel free to list reasons as simple and as complex as need be. Ultima Online Everquest 1 brought about a "magic" to it. Why? Most people would argue that it's because those were the FIRST and ONLY MMORPG's around, and that alone made them amazing, something special. What's your take on it? What's your ideal MMO? And how would you "Bring Back the Magic" or do you think it's long gone?
Only one thing is really needed. Stop making the grind/leveling/gearing up process the whole point of the game. Give players something meaningful to do at the end of the long climb to the top, other than jumping all the way back to the bottom to start all over again. (note to companies like Blizzard .. when your players have ground faction, levels, and raided for gear, giving them more grinds and raids after level cap isn't going to keep their interest for very long. There is a very good reason I call Wow "Carrot on a Stick Online" these days)
Honestly playing these modern MMORPGs is like wining and dining a long time date at the most expensive restaurant in town, going whole hog with the lobster and creme brulee, the romantic musicians, two bottles of Fleur de Champagne Blanc de Blancs, two dozen exotic roses, an item of tasteful yet elegant jewelry, and hoping THIS time the night will end with some sex, or at the very least, some heavy petting. Yet in reality it just turns out to be coffee and mints while you listen once again how their day was.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
Only one thing is really needed. Stop making the grind/leveling/gearing up process the whole point of the game. Give players something meaningful to do at the end of the long climb to the top, other than jumping all the way back to the bottom to start all over again.
Like..?
Using LOL is like saying "my argument sucks but I still want to disagree".
I don't think it is a specific feature, sandbox, FFA PvP, whatever as long as you that you have been there and done that everything else just blurrs together, and while you prefer insert mechanic here it will not produce any "magic".
Though this is not going to be helpful, you need something that is completely different from what we have now, setting, controls, mechanics, style, logic, you name it. You need that so people are put in a position where they don't understand the gameworld immediately, I don't mean make the game obtuse or confusing just break the players' general preconceptions.
You can do something like make a sandbox if you want and neato you can simulate yam farming, but it will not create the "magic" if you are in the same setting with the same controls, same logic, same rules that you have done since UO or EQ.
Now granted when you are renovating and doing something completly different you also have to do it well, being different for the sake of being different does not make a good game.
Don't you worry little buddy. You're dealing with a man of honor. However, honor requires a higher percentage of profit
I say bring back the "randomness" of named (boss) spawn rates and loot drops. I for some reason can't stand the fact that I can run to an area where a named spawns and know he'll be there waiting to be killed, and will also drop the item I want in recent MMO's. EQ had that randomness that sometimes had you waiting for hours...but you used that time to make "real" friends and guildmates that way.
Also as someone else mentioned earlier is a lot of classes with their own individual special skills, and not just same classes with different names on opposite factions. I think opposing factions should have different classes from each other, and each side needs to learn how to overcome those different skills. This whole cookie-cutter classes thing is getting stale. Once again EQ had many different classes with their own individual skills, and guess what??....They actually were skills that people desired to have in their groups, or at least needed their buffs...and they were such good buffs, people would actually pay for them!!
The last thing that I think should go just to get player socializing back inot these games is the Auction House feature. I mean why do todays MMO's have a trade channel AND an Auction House. If there's an auction house, we don't need a trade channel for people to just throw in senseless spam. Or the other way, if we have a trade channel, we don't need an Auction House. Whichever way, but we don't need both. I personally liked going into Freeport in EQ to check out whats for sale, or to sell my own stuff. Since trade channels in a lot of games are global you could do your advertising while adventuring so it's not like you have to stand in one city area for hours to accomplish this.
Overall I think recent MMO's got rid of the need to group. I used to group a lot in EQ. Now I find myself playing WoW and I don't even look forward to grouping with people. WoW really only needs groups for endgame raiding, other than that you can get to level 80 solo very easily. So now what happens is a lot of these people got to level 80 without much help and they act like total 'tards in a group in the endgame because they didnt have any experience in grouping ethics prior to this. I'd like to see more necessary grouping come back, and not made to easy either, the group needs to communicate the plans to even make it successfully. I mean why play a "multiplayer game" solo most of the way?
Only one thing is really needed. Stop making the grind/leveling/gearing up process the whole point of the game. Give players something meaningful to do at the end of the long climb to the top, other than jumping all the way back to the bottom to start all over again.
Like..?
Oh, just off the top of my head.. buildable/capturable/destoryable (or at least diminsihable) player owned cities, capturable/transformable territories, non static world where player changes can make an impact. And this kind of system wouldn't have to be a massive PVP fest. Imagine having to protect your cities from a horde of NPC monsters. Say that orc camp a mile from your town is left alone, over a period of say a month it gets bigger, until one day they get big enough to come attack you. Could be fun. (Wow wise it would be cool if after fighting your way in to kill a major NPC caused some kind of game change instead of them just respawning a few minutes later.)
Allow epic items to come from more than just world and raid drops. Set up a system of crafting that requires group effort on collecting the rare resources(staking a mining claim, maybe having defend the mine at certain times from players or NPCs) and on making the item make it possible for players to pick or even create unique meshes, names, and powers for their craftible epics. (possibly make players need to build up a certain kind of forge in their player city).
Non PVP how about things like mini games. How cool would a system of say 3d gambling work out. Imagine your toon sitting around a table with his buddies drinking beer and playing cards, that would make a fun distraction. (or for orc players, bowling with gnomes or something)
Allow an in game system where players can leave their mark on the world by creating unique art or music, or clothing, architecture, what have you. Maybe even allow them to auction them in the games action house system.
There, and that is just off the top of my head. I imagine a group of long time MMORPG people could sit down and hash out some really epic ideas.
The really sad thing about my list? Almost all of it has been tried in other earlier MMORPGs already. Most of those games were successes (at least by pre-Wow standards). I do not understand why AAA games that are so good at taking certain good aspects of games for their own, never thought to try to add any of these.
I really don't get why when you bring up lack of end game someone always says "Really? Add what?" Like there isn't any more fun things that can be created in this virtual age. For those people I'd like to say, there is a whole big unexplored world out there, if you want to spend your whole life on a treadmill going nowhere, that is your business. Some of us though would like to actually go a roaming and see what he other side of the hill looks like.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
I say bring back the "randomness" of named (boss) spawn rates and loot drops. I for some reason can't stand the fact that I can run to an area where a named spawns and know he'll be there waiting to be killed, and will also drop the item I want in recent MMO's. EQ had that randomness that sometimes had you waiting for hours...but you used that time to make "real" friends and guildmates that way.
Also as someone else mentioned earlier is a lot of classes with their own individual special skills, and not just same classes with different names on opposite factions. I think opposing factions should have different classes from each other, and each side needs to learn how to overcome those different skills. This whole cookie-cutter classes thing is getting stale. Once again EQ had many different classes with their own individual skills, and guess what??....They actually were skills that people desired to have in their groups, or at least needed their buffs...and they were such good buffs, people would actually pay for them!!
The last thing that I think should go just to get player socializing back inot these games is the Auction House feature. I mean why do todays MMO's have a trade channel AND an Auction House. If there's an auction house, we don't need a trade channel for people to just throw in senseless spam. Or the other way, if we have a trade channel, we don't need an Auction House. Whichever way, but we don't need both. I personally liked going into Freeport in EQ to check out whats for sale, or to sell my own stuff. Since trade channels in a lot of games are global you could do your advertising while adventuring so it's not like you have to stand in one city area for hours to accomplish this. Overall I think recent MMO's got rid of the need to group. I used to group a lot in EQ. Now I find myself playing WoW and I don't even look forward to grouping with people. WoW really only needs groups for endgame raiding, other than that you can get to level 80 solo very easily. So now what happens is a lot of these people got to level 80 without much help and they act like total 'tards in a group in the endgame because they didnt have any experience in grouping ethics prior to this. I'd like to see more necessary grouping come back, and not made to easy either, the group needs to communicate the plans to even make it successfully. I mean why play a "multiplayer game" solo most of the way?
I hate to condense your post down to a couple of sentences, but yeah, it is time companies took the training wheels the hell back off MMORPGs.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
Feel free to list reasons as simple and as complex as need be. Ultima Online Everquest 1 brought about a "magic" to it. Why? Most people would argue that it's because those were the FIRST and ONLY MMORPG's around, and that alone made them amazing, something special. What's your take on it? What's your ideal MMO? And how would you "Bring Back the Magic" or do you think it's long gone?
EQ is really different than any other MMORPG
EQ has no direction or guidance when starting out
EQ has no quest-for-exp chains
EQ has exp loss when you die
Traveling in EQ is more real, you actually have to be careful when going to different areas
Lack of hand-holding, there were no maps, anything like that
No instancing of PvE or PvP content.
EQ had a good soundtrack, unlike newer MMORPGs
Towns in EQ were very distinct
The world was huge, traveling from one town to another might take 5 hours
EQ had challenging raid content
EQ required some skill to level up
Another thing I liked about EQ was the fact that a race didn't always belong to one team or faction. On the PvP servers, your choice of Deity somewhat influenced what team you would be on.
There was just a lot more variety in terms of what races and what classes you could pick in EQ.
Newer MMORPGs are pretty much side based, pick "evil" or "good", and then you are limited to certain races. So there is almost no variety / uniqueness in terms of what race you can pick in these games.
They really need to bring back the large # of races / class choices like EQ had.
Ideal MMORPG would be EQ1 re-released up to velious, then continue from there (maybe update graphics but I would keep the underlying game the same). If they were to try to make their game like WoW by making it trivial to level, providing run-around quests, instances, etc. I probably wouldn't even play it.
I hate to condense your post down to a couple of sentences, but yeah, it is time companies took the training wheels the hell back off MMORPGs.
It's no problem really, that's is basically what my long-winded post came down to. I get it from my moms side of the family that we go into long explainations. I'm just glad someone agrees with me.
I did forget to mention crafting that actually means something. Why craft in most games when the end-game raid content gear is way better than any crafted piece? The only purpose I see in crafting right now is to supply decent gear at early levels. I feel at least a few pieces of crafted endgame gear should be better than any looted item since someone had to put a lot of time into leveling up a crafting skill. I'll try not to get long-winded again, so that's all I have to say about that!! LOL
Oh, just off the top of my head.. buildable/capturable/destoryable (or at least diminsihable) player owned cities, capturable/transformable territories, non static world where player changes can make an impact. And this kind of system wouldn't have to be a massive PVP fest. Imagine having to protect your cities from a horde of NPC monsters. Say that orc camp a mile from your town is left alone, over a period of say a month it gets bigger, until one day they get big enough to come attack you. Could be fun. (Wow wise it would be cool if after fighting your way in to kill a major NPC caused some kind of game change instead of them just respawning a few minutes later.) Allow epic items to come from more than just world and raid drops. Set up a system of crafting that requires group effort on collecting the rare resources(staking a mining claim, maybe having defend the mine at certain times from players or NPCs) and on making the item make it possible for players to pick or even create unique meshes, names, and powers for their craftible epics. (possibly make players need to build up a certain kind of forge in their player city). Non PVP how about things like mini games. How cool would a system of say 3d gambling work out. Imagine your toon sitting around a table with his buddies drinking beer and playing cards, that would make a fun distraction. (or for orc players, bowling with gnomes or something) Allow an in game system where players can leave their mark on the world by creating unique art or music, or clothing, architecture, what have you. Maybe even allow them to auction them in the games action house system. There, and that is just off the top of my head. I imagine a group of long time MMORPG people could sit down and hash out some really epic ideas. The really sad thing about my list? Almost all of it has been tried in other earlier MMORPGs already. Most of those games were successes (at least by pre-Wow standards). I do not understand why AAA games that are so good at taking certain good aspects of games for their own, never thought to try to add any of these. I really don't get why when you bring up lack of end game someone always says "Really? Add what?" Like there isn't any more fun things that can be created in this virtual age. For those people I'd like to say, there is a whole big unexplored world out there, if you want to spend your whole life on a treadmill going nowhere, that is your business. Some of us though would like to actually go a roaming and see what he other side of the hill looks like.
Oh... Well, those things have all been done in the game I played some time ago, but they didn't really make an impact as much as progressing your own character did, which is the point of the game for most people. It's nice for added diversity, but I think the problem lies deeper than just that. Only adding those things won't fix the issues.
Using LOL is like saying "my argument sucks but I still want to disagree".
Get rid of chat. After that, all MMOs will be more tolerable.
QFT! One of the big changes was the introduction of serverwide chat features.... lose them and make folks have to communicate via in game mail or face to pixelated face.
The Endless Forest - MMO Game w/o chat. Enjoy what you asked for in your niche game.
"There is only one thing of which I am certain, and that's nothing is certain."
Feel free to list reasons as simple and as complex as need be. Ultima Online Everquest 1 brought about a "magic" to it. Why?
For the same reason your first kiss will always be special.
You can't bring back "the magic" -- FOR YOU -- any more than you can lose your virginity again. (I realize that, posting on MMORPG.com, this might be a problematic metaphor for some people...) But plenty of people, mostly teens, installing WoW for the first time are having the EXACT SAME MAGICAL EXPERIENCE YOU HAD WITH EVERQUEST I. You don't want to hear it and don't want to believe it, because you don't want to think YOU have changed, and not the world, but that's the truth.
Or, as someone else said long ago, "The golden age of science fiction is 14".
This isn't true just of MMORPGs, but of just about everything which inspires passion. Comic book fans have these debates, and so do movie fans, and music fans in countless genres, and probably sports fans, though I try not to associate with them. Go to console game forums, and you'll have people complaining that the games for this year's model of console are "soulless" and "corporate" and they want the "magical" games they played when they were 12-16, which might have been Playstation I, 16 Bit Nintendo, or Atari 2600, depending on who you talk to -- but, you know, not ACTUALLY those games because if you boot them up, you will discover, amazingly, that looked at objectively and without the backward-facing rosy eyeglass of youth, they sucked. What people want is something that will make them FEEL like they did playing EQ1, but which is, in actual play and in every way, NOT EQ1. Good luck with that.
I've been playing computer games since 1977 or so, and other than nostalgia, modern games are better in every way -- deeper, richer, better designed, more involving.
(Another thing to consider is that in this age of instant, constant, communication, one of the things which made those games "magic" -- the sense of exploration and discovery -- CANNOT be recaptured. There can be no mysteries when everything anyone has seen is instantly added to a wiki, one which was created starting in the first early betas, if not alphas, and monitor programs track ever variable associated with every object flowing back and forth from your computer to the server and pump them all into a spreadsheet so you can optimize every aspects of your character.)
Only one thing is really needed. Stop making the grind/leveling/gearing up process the whole point of the game. Give players something meaningful to do at the end of the long climb to the top, other than jumping all the way back to the bottom to start all over again.
See, I have the exact opposite desire. I'm sick of the "Rush to endgame" mentality and the idea that "the game starts at max level" (Or max skill points or max whatever). I want a game where your "reward" for making it to max level is that your character is retired and his name appears in the Scroll Of Heroes or some such nonsense and you start over -- maybe you've unlocked some new race or class or feature or function, or you get some kind of "legacy" or "inheritance' or something, but the point of the game is to PLAY it, not to rush through 95% of the world so you can do 5% of it over and over and over...
(BTW, a lot of people here are posting "cool ideas" and not considering why those ideas haven't been implemented, as if they're the first people to think of them. A lot of issues of "player generated content' or "letting players affect the world" aren't considered by people in a mad rush of "Wouldn't it be fun if....". Ask these questions:
a)How does this idea work when there's almost no one else logged in? (Hey, orcs are invading the town! Uhm... anyone else here to help me? Anyone? Bueller?)
b)How does this idea work when 1,000 people all rush into an area to try it? (Assume server stability is not the problem -- this is a design question. Wow, I cut down a tree and it stays cut down! Cool! Wow, everyone cut down all the trees on server on the first day. Now what?)
c)How does this idea affect the experience of a new player starting out six months after the game has shipped? A year? Four years? Ten years?
d)Who owns player created content?
e)Who polices it for copyright and other violations?
f)How do you deal with players logging in to find that, while they were logged off, someone changed the world around them?
g)How could this be exploited by organized guilds? By lone griefers? By guilds of griefers?
h)It it's possible for Player 'A' to make it impossible for Player 'B' to do what he wants to do, how do you convinced Player 'B' to keep paying for the privilege of not being able to play the game? (Remember, any answer you can imagine for what Player B can do in response ("Find some friends!") can also be done by Player "A".) With dozens of competing games, a new player has no reason to put up with any shit from other players, and if you argue "But that interaction is FUN once you've gotten used to it!", how do you convince someone to keep playing long enough to "find the fun"?
i)If you rely on player interaction with each other to make the game fun, how do you stop the cascade collapse if the population dips? (Pop is low, so people have less fun, so people leave, so population goes lower, so...)
j)For every "It would be so fun if I could...", reverse and ask, "Would it be fun if someone else could...".
a nicely designed world. I mean this is one of the aspects of EQ- just the sort of will to want to travel from Qeynos to Freeport. A game has to make the world compelling for players to want to do that. AC2 I also thought was a nicely designed world, it sort of had a compelling natural kind of touch to it's landscapes.
Comments
Give me the fun, structured content of a AAA themepark MMO. a la WOW
Give me the wide, open world of a sandbox MMO. a la DFO, MO or EVE
Give me RvR with more than 2 factions. a la DAOC
Give me deep crafting. a la SWG pre NGE
Give me non-combat content and mechanics that support Roleplay. - a la Second Life
Now give me all that in one game.
<nods>
If someone could figure out a way to incorporate all that for under 250M USD it would be a truely amazing game, but would probably cost us all 29.99/mo and a 99.00 box fee.
I'd pay it. It'd actually save me money; I'm paying for WoW, EVE and FE atm.
Some of your requests are mutually exclusive though, the freedom of a true sandbox game cannot exist with themepark design. Now, if you meant large open world like VG or DFO had, then you might have a chance.
Hngh. I dislike the term true sandbox; it has connotations of elitism and is an ill-defined and subjective term at best. I could imagine an open-world game with embedded themepark content, player housing and territory control. I'm curious; which sandbox elements do you think would be impossible in such a game?
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
QFT! One of the big changes was the introduction of serverwide chat features.... lose them and make folks have to communicate via in game mail or face to pixelated face.
I'll start like this... my favorite MMO ever was Ultima Online with my second being SWG pre-cu.
Now that said the title of the thread seems ironic. In the end its about what someone enjoyed in MMO's as opposed to MMO's having lost something. Tho I may agree with the idea that MMO's are no captivating to me anymore... there are indeed more people playing now than ever.
The other side of that coin does have some reality to it tho. So many companies are not going to design "for that crowd" because they don't want to have only 300 or 400 thousand subs... Well how many new MMO's in the last two years have actually even retained much over 100,000...
At some point someone will design the MMO the OP wants... its more of a question as to whether they will still be gaming by then. I mean at some point as X more games fail to grab the "wow crowd" someone will get the clue or there won't be many companies making MMO's (due to the epic amount of wasted development dollars and investors pulling away from epic fail investments).
I think it would be enough to do as Lineage, just allow people of a certain level to be able to chat in the OCC.
Of course leveling there actually took some effort so it might not be enough today.
i like chat at least in a zone wide (iow, large area) capacity. Moving from EQ (which had zone chat) to DAOC (no zone chat) made it seem like i was playing alone.
Being in a group, and a guild, even when the guild is part of an allegiance (or whatever they called them in DAOC) is not enough.
It doesn't need to be server wide, but at least have some sort of large coverage.
Force so called Hardcore gamers into Gitmo like facilities, and enjoy the genres evolution without having to listen to a bunch of fucks cry because their e-peen has gone limp.
Nuke Blizzard for their sins!
If WoW never would have been released mmorpg companies would still be making exciting and advanced challangeing games instead of trying to make another kind of silver platter mmorpg. Just look at all the releases before WoW hit the market and all the ones released after! Why the F do they try to remake that which people dont want?
The MMORPG market is going to hell... nuf said!
If WoW never introduced the vast majority of today's MMO players to the genre in the first place it wouldn't have convinced other companies that they struck gold. WoW is an anomaly, one that was fueled by 1:1 contact between players in real life to induct friends into the game, friends that were clowning them on it years ago. Anyone who played WoW as their first game (and that's MILLIONS of people), it's because the game had a decent backing IP, and everyone enslaved their best friends in a domino effect.
It's never going to happen again, because MMO's made it big with WoW as the posterchild... and everyone bases their expectations on their first game. God knows I do, and I come from UO/SWG - that says everything about my preferences. WoW's structure will be around for a long time because it's what the new majority craves, it doesn't mean all these game's need to copy WoW's gameplay.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
I would get rid of number crunching. I would ban terms like DPS and gear check. I would not allow any Z's in characters names. Unless it was appropriate of course. I would also hit the way back button so that I never again had to look at some donkey bringing up stock prices and talking about shareholders when referring to a game. In fact, I would hit my annihilate button and vaporize about 90% of the gamers that are too preoccupied with the price of shares or how many more .0001 of a point of damage is done and just game with the people that want to have fun.
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
Only one thing is really needed. Stop making the grind/leveling/gearing up process the whole point of the game. Give players something meaningful to do at the end of the long climb to the top, other than jumping all the way back to the bottom to start all over again. (note to companies like Blizzard .. when your players have ground faction, levels, and raided for gear, giving them more grinds and raids after level cap isn't going to keep their interest for very long. There is a very good reason I call Wow "Carrot on a Stick Online" these days)
Honestly playing these modern MMORPGs is like wining and dining a long time date at the most expensive restaurant in town, going whole hog with the lobster and creme brulee, the romantic musicians, two bottles of Fleur de Champagne Blanc de Blancs, two dozen exotic roses, an item of tasteful yet elegant jewelry, and hoping THIS time the night will end with some sex, or at the very least, some heavy petting. Yet in reality it just turns out to be coffee and mints while you listen once again how their day was.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
Like..?
I don't think it is a specific feature, sandbox, FFA PvP, whatever as long as you that you have been there and done that everything else just blurrs together, and while you prefer insert mechanic here it will not produce any "magic".
Though this is not going to be helpful, you need something that is completely different from what we have now, setting, controls, mechanics, style, logic, you name it. You need that so people are put in a position where they don't understand the gameworld immediately, I don't mean make the game obtuse or confusing just break the players' general preconceptions.
You can do something like make a sandbox if you want and neato you can simulate yam farming, but it will not create the "magic" if you are in the same setting with the same controls, same logic, same rules that you have done since UO or EQ.
Now granted when you are renovating and doing something completly different you also have to do it well, being different for the sake of being different does not make a good game.
Don't you worry little buddy. You're dealing with a man of honor. However, honor requires a higher percentage of profit
I say bring back the "randomness" of named (boss) spawn rates and loot drops. I for some reason can't stand the fact that I can run to an area where a named spawns and know he'll be there waiting to be killed, and will also drop the item I want in recent MMO's. EQ had that randomness that sometimes had you waiting for hours...but you used that time to make "real" friends and guildmates that way.
Also as someone else mentioned earlier is a lot of classes with their own individual special skills, and not just same classes with different names on opposite factions. I think opposing factions should have different classes from each other, and each side needs to learn how to overcome those different skills. This whole cookie-cutter classes thing is getting stale. Once again EQ had many different classes with their own individual skills, and guess what??....They actually were skills that people desired to have in their groups, or at least needed their buffs...and they were such good buffs, people would actually pay for them!!
The last thing that I think should go just to get player socializing back inot these games is the Auction House feature. I mean why do todays MMO's have a trade channel AND an Auction House. If there's an auction house, we don't need a trade channel for people to just throw in senseless spam. Or the other way, if we have a trade channel, we don't need an Auction House. Whichever way, but we don't need both. I personally liked going into Freeport in EQ to check out whats for sale, or to sell my own stuff. Since trade channels in a lot of games are global you could do your advertising while adventuring so it's not like you have to stand in one city area for hours to accomplish this.
Overall I think recent MMO's got rid of the need to group. I used to group a lot in EQ. Now I find myself playing WoW and I don't even look forward to grouping with people. WoW really only needs groups for endgame raiding, other than that you can get to level 80 solo very easily. So now what happens is a lot of these people got to level 80 without much help and they act like total 'tards in a group in the endgame because they didnt have any experience in grouping ethics prior to this. I'd like to see more necessary grouping come back, and not made to easy either, the group needs to communicate the plans to even make it successfully. I mean why play a "multiplayer game" solo most of the way?
Like..?
Oh, just off the top of my head.. buildable/capturable/destoryable (or at least diminsihable) player owned cities, capturable/transformable territories, non static world where player changes can make an impact. And this kind of system wouldn't have to be a massive PVP fest. Imagine having to protect your cities from a horde of NPC monsters. Say that orc camp a mile from your town is left alone, over a period of say a month it gets bigger, until one day they get big enough to come attack you. Could be fun. (Wow wise it would be cool if after fighting your way in to kill a major NPC caused some kind of game change instead of them just respawning a few minutes later.)
Allow epic items to come from more than just world and raid drops. Set up a system of crafting that requires group effort on collecting the rare resources(staking a mining claim, maybe having defend the mine at certain times from players or NPCs) and on making the item make it possible for players to pick or even create unique meshes, names, and powers for their craftible epics. (possibly make players need to build up a certain kind of forge in their player city).
Non PVP how about things like mini games. How cool would a system of say 3d gambling work out. Imagine your toon sitting around a table with his buddies drinking beer and playing cards, that would make a fun distraction. (or for orc players, bowling with gnomes or something)
Allow an in game system where players can leave their mark on the world by creating unique art or music, or clothing, architecture, what have you. Maybe even allow them to auction them in the games action house system.
There, and that is just off the top of my head. I imagine a group of long time MMORPG people could sit down and hash out some really epic ideas.
The really sad thing about my list? Almost all of it has been tried in other earlier MMORPGs already. Most of those games were successes (at least by pre-Wow standards). I do not understand why AAA games that are so good at taking certain good aspects of games for their own, never thought to try to add any of these.
I really don't get why when you bring up lack of end game someone always says "Really? Add what?" Like there isn't any more fun things that can be created in this virtual age. For those people I'd like to say, there is a whole big unexplored world out there, if you want to spend your whole life on a treadmill going nowhere, that is your business. Some of us though would like to actually go a roaming and see what he other side of the hill looks like.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
I hate to condense your post down to a couple of sentences, but yeah, it is time companies took the training wheels the hell back off MMORPGs.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
EQ is really different than any other MMORPG
Another thing I liked about EQ was the fact that a race didn't always belong to one team or faction. On the PvP servers, your choice of Deity somewhat influenced what team you would be on.
There was just a lot more variety in terms of what races and what classes you could pick in EQ.
Newer MMORPGs are pretty much side based, pick "evil" or "good", and then you are limited to certain races. So there is almost no variety / uniqueness in terms of what race you can pick in these games.
They really need to bring back the large # of races / class choices like EQ had.
Ideal MMORPG would be EQ1 re-released up to velious, then continue from there (maybe update graphics but I would keep the underlying game the same). If they were to try to make their game like WoW by making it trivial to level, providing run-around quests, instances, etc. I probably wouldn't even play it.
It's no problem really, that's is basically what my long-winded post came down to. I get it from my moms side of the family that we go into long explainations. I'm just glad someone agrees with me.
I did forget to mention crafting that actually means something. Why craft in most games when the end-game raid content gear is way better than any crafted piece? The only purpose I see in crafting right now is to supply decent gear at early levels. I feel at least a few pieces of crafted endgame gear should be better than any looted item since someone had to put a lot of time into leveling up a crafting skill. I'll try not to get long-winded again, so that's all I have to say about that!! LOL
Oh... Well, those things have all been done in the game I played some time ago, but they didn't really make an impact as much as progressing your own character did, which is the point of the game for most people. It's nice for added diversity, but I think the problem lies deeper than just that. Only adding those things won't fix the issues.
QFT! One of the big changes was the introduction of serverwide chat features.... lose them and make folks have to communicate via in game mail or face to pixelated face.
The Endless Forest - MMO Game w/o chat. Enjoy what you asked for in your niche game.
"There is only one thing of which I am certain, and that's nothing is certain."
I would bring Rubicite armor back from the dead.
For the same reason your first kiss will always be special.
You can't bring back "the magic" -- FOR YOU -- any more than you can lose your virginity again. (I realize that, posting on MMORPG.com, this might be a problematic metaphor for some people...) But plenty of people, mostly teens, installing WoW for the first time are having the EXACT SAME MAGICAL EXPERIENCE YOU HAD WITH EVERQUEST I. You don't want to hear it and don't want to believe it, because you don't want to think YOU have changed, and not the world, but that's the truth.
Or, as someone else said long ago, "The golden age of science fiction is 14".
This isn't true just of MMORPGs, but of just about everything which inspires passion. Comic book fans have these debates, and so do movie fans, and music fans in countless genres, and probably sports fans, though I try not to associate with them. Go to console game forums, and you'll have people complaining that the games for this year's model of console are "soulless" and "corporate" and they want the "magical" games they played when they were 12-16, which might have been Playstation I, 16 Bit Nintendo, or Atari 2600, depending on who you talk to -- but, you know, not ACTUALLY those games because if you boot them up, you will discover, amazingly, that looked at objectively and without the backward-facing rosy eyeglass of youth, they sucked. What people want is something that will make them FEEL like they did playing EQ1, but which is, in actual play and in every way, NOT EQ1. Good luck with that.
I've been playing computer games since 1977 or so, and other than nostalgia, modern games are better in every way -- deeper, richer, better designed, more involving.
(Another thing to consider is that in this age of instant, constant, communication, one of the things which made those games "magic" -- the sense of exploration and discovery -- CANNOT be recaptured. There can be no mysteries when everything anyone has seen is instantly added to a wiki, one which was created starting in the first early betas, if not alphas, and monitor programs track ever variable associated with every object flowing back and forth from your computer to the server and pump them all into a spreadsheet so you can optimize every aspects of your character.)
See, I have the exact opposite desire. I'm sick of the "Rush to endgame" mentality and the idea that "the game starts at max level" (Or max skill points or max whatever). I want a game where your "reward" for making it to max level is that your character is retired and his name appears in the Scroll Of Heroes or some such nonsense and you start over -- maybe you've unlocked some new race or class or feature or function, or you get some kind of "legacy" or "inheritance' or something, but the point of the game is to PLAY it, not to rush through 95% of the world so you can do 5% of it over and over and over...
(BTW, a lot of people here are posting "cool ideas" and not considering why those ideas haven't been implemented, as if they're the first people to think of them. A lot of issues of "player generated content' or "letting players affect the world" aren't considered by people in a mad rush of "Wouldn't it be fun if....". Ask these questions:
a)How does this idea work when there's almost no one else logged in? (Hey, orcs are invading the town! Uhm... anyone else here to help me? Anyone? Bueller?)
b)How does this idea work when 1,000 people all rush into an area to try it? (Assume server stability is not the problem -- this is a design question. Wow, I cut down a tree and it stays cut down! Cool! Wow, everyone cut down all the trees on server on the first day. Now what?)
c)How does this idea affect the experience of a new player starting out six months after the game has shipped? A year? Four years? Ten years?
d)Who owns player created content?
e)Who polices it for copyright and other violations?
f)How do you deal with players logging in to find that, while they were logged off, someone changed the world around them?
g)How could this be exploited by organized guilds? By lone griefers? By guilds of griefers?
h)It it's possible for Player 'A' to make it impossible for Player 'B' to do what he wants to do, how do you convinced Player 'B' to keep paying for the privilege of not being able to play the game? (Remember, any answer you can imagine for what Player B can do in response ("Find some friends!") can also be done by Player "A".) With dozens of competing games, a new player has no reason to put up with any shit from other players, and if you argue "But that interaction is FUN once you've gotten used to it!", how do you convince someone to keep playing long enough to "find the fun"?
i)If you rely on player interaction with each other to make the game fun, how do you stop the cascade collapse if the population dips? (Pop is low, so people have less fun, so people leave, so population goes lower, so...)
j)For every "It would be so fun if I could...", reverse and ask, "Would it be fun if someone else could...".
a nicely designed world. I mean this is one of the aspects of EQ- just the sort of will to want to travel from Qeynos to Freeport. A game has to make the world compelling for players to want to do that. AC2 I also thought was a nicely designed world, it sort of had a compelling natural kind of touch to it's landscapes.
Only way now is to lobotomize the players.