Boredom in MMORPG: What Will Tera Do?

bronecar

Just a little reading from www.mmosite.com regarding our hopes for the future of MMO's and how generic the genre has become.

 

http://news.mmosite.com/content/2010-02-16/boredom_in_mmorpg_what_will_tera_do,1.shtml

 

Enjoy and feel free to leave a comment

 

Valentina

I agree with a lot of what the article states, but it was a little hard to understand at times. TERA really does have potential to be great, and inspire some innovation in the genre, because I do agree that it's been stuck in a rut for years. The thing is though, people don't have the time to spend doing mindless grinds in a video game, and it's even gotten to the point where "quests" are not enough to alleviate that. Quests are now going from a text box with an OK button, to an engaging dialogue system that tells a story people are more likely to pay attention to than a bland box with a wall of text followed by a summery of kill 10 boars. The future of MMO's lies with the developers being able to deliver an engaging, unique, and truly entertaining gaming experience apart from what else is on the market, you can't just have 1 draw point anymore and expect it to hold people for very long. The only thing I have seen that sets TERA apart from other MMO's is it's combat system. Bluehole will really have to deliver a game with depth not only in game-play but in lore, story-telling, and overall long term entertainment. If they truly want it to succeed in the long term, especially in the western gaming market then they can't make it a mindless grind of a million monsters and expect their fun combat system to hold the players. It's obvious that the MMO community has long since moved on from that and if they can't deliver anything but that, than they can expect to see what every other game has seen in the last few years; rapidly dwindling subscriptions and an abandoned game.

bronecar

@Valentina

 

First point, your avatar looks much better

 

Second point, funny you mentioned grinding, here is an excerpt from the Korean game website 'This Is Game' (2009/11/27 )

 

 

This Is Game (TIS): It seems that the quests available in CBT2 were too excessive in terms of quantity. Overall, how many quests are there ready for Tera?

 

AP: We know that there have been a lot, may be too much quests available in the starting area, which is Garden of Dawn. It was to help the new players of Tera getting used to the game-play style. And we are still aiming to put the similar amount of quests in other places as well.

But after some analysis, we have come to a conclusion that the way the quests were introduced to the players in the areas after Belika was not refined well enough. So henceforth, the amount of the quests will be about 70~80% of the amount introduced in Garden of Dawn. We are not only looking at the number of the quests here, but also the overall time taken by the players to complete them.

Valentina

Yeah I saw that, but it's still pretty vague. 

For example, AION has alot of quests but not enough, and the XP reward they give isn't sufficient to level based off questing. Secondly, the fact of the matter is most people like being able to solo when they feel like it, that's just how it is. So making quests 95% group based isn't gonna work. Personally, I love grouping. I prefer it to going solo, and I normally play games with friends, as I'm not into playing by myself, but at the same time I may feel like rolling an alternate character just to goof around with by myself until later on in the game, and if I can't do that then it'll be annoying.

And thanks, I like this Avatar more as well!