To be quite frank..most MMO companies don't give a crap about putting out quality games anymore. Look at Cryptic. They rushed Champions out the door as well as STO when the community told them it wasn't ready. They were selling pre-orders and lifetime memberships before the game ever got out of beta. If they put half the polish and care into their game as they did into their PR/Marketing those games might have been good. (even now, though, Cryptic fails at Marketing).
World of Warcraft continues to move along, but you can tell the past expansion was a drop in quality. The game was so easy my 9 yr old daughter could do it and raid if she wanted too. It was boring. The follow the same formula when it comes to new quest zones/hubs and there really isn't any challenge for guilds anymore there.
LoTR was an interesting game, but nothing special. I enjoyed my time playing it, but it just didn't have anything extra to keep me playing it. The PvP monster thing was just plain stupid. I expected more, but it just seemed like just another MMO to me. DDO was another miss Turbine had. I didn't like it before it went F2P and tried to enjoy it afterwards and just gave up. They should have put the game in the Forgotten Realms universe instead of Eberron.
Most of the games I see on this site are all just boring clones of each other. So many games and nothing stands out from one another. Everytime a game gets some hype some developer just fails to deliver. Look at Aion or Vanguard. Both could probably have been good games, but the companies developing them are clueless.
All the F2P games are grindfests or you have to purchase things in cash shops to actually play at higher levels. Perfect World Entertainment drives me nuts how they do their games. I actually am hoping Forsaken World is going to be different, but I know it won't be. Allods is a bloody mess even now after the cash shop issues. It's flooded with spammers and the upcoming patches are going to ruin the game unless Gpotato decides to scrap some of the new patch features/game code. Only real decent F2P MMO I have played recently was Earth Eternal. It was cartoony and a browser game, but it was kinda fun. Still nothing to set it apart from most of the pack.
You know, at this point in the development of MMO's I just wish we had a game like Neverwinter Nights. I don't mean the premise of that game, but the fact a person could use the toolset together and make their own game worlds and a huge community shared resources to build things. Sometimes I just wish I could code lol. I want a game that players can actually affect how things happen in the game world. Not some stupid static world. Star Wars Galaxies at least allowed people to build there own towns and other things in game. Haven't seen a decent crafting system since then. Where is the creativity in games today? Stop being clones and be original.
The United States....has ISSUES. Here, it's all about the Almighty Dollar and....AND....being "popular," and "cool." Marketing is KING here. If you have the money to market, like for instance....Folger's Coffee....people will BUY it. Companies sell the "cool factor" the popularity factor, and quality...REAL quality...is not as important to most people as having the coolest, latest, most advertised "thing." People want the "thing" that their neighbors have seen advertised and thought "Ooo...I'd like to have that." "OMG...look honey, the Joneses bought that car we saw advertised on television!" (Or they play that COOL game, World of Warcraft, you know...the one Mr. T plays!)
Foldgers is NOT cool. But what Foldgers is is accessible and convenient, and it got that way by being one of the oldest coffee companies in America and merging with bigger and bigger companies so that it can be distributed nationally. Rest assured, if La Dolce Vita was located on every other street corner and available in most stores, we Americans would snatch it up.
That in mind, which do you think sounds "cooler"? La Dolce Vita, or Foldgers?
I don't think you know quite what drives Americans and their buying habits, at least from what I can tell from this paragraph. Americans are far more driven by convenience and affordability, often at the price of quality. Look no further than CD's and MP3, for example. MP3 is inferior in quality, no question, yet CD sales are dropping, and digital downloads are rising. And I doubt this is much different than the rest of the world.
And this is why Facebook browser games are getting hugely popular, despite the fact that they are total crap. People find that after they've posted to their wall, lying about how much they love their family, friends, and how cute their kids all are, in one click they can access a silly little time wasting minigame which allows them to hide from all those people.
For instance....Starbucks. FFS they are PROUD of their product, aren't they? But I used to work in a coffeehouse in Overland Park (upper class area of Kansas City on the Kansas side) that had the absolute best espresso you have ever tasted other than maybe Illy from Italy, but Illy is 40 bucks a pound, so..... Anyway, it wasn't bitter like Starbucks, it was sweet, and smooth, and clean tasting and nutty and smelled like HEAVEN. It had a crema that was like satin. It was a blend made by the owners of La Dolce Vita. They traveled all over the world to get the best blend of coffee beans for their espresso blend, and boy....the difference in taste was astounding. BUT....they are a middle aged couple, wealthy, yes....but do they have the finances to compete with STARBUCKS in marketing??? No way in hell.
I tell you what though....that was one BUSY coffeehouse. And Pat and Leslie made a fortune within a few years. And there was a Starbucks right across the street that ended up closing DOWN because of La Dolce Vita. The coffee was THAT good. But you know what....none of you people had EVER heard of them. And I bet EVERYONE here has heard of Starbucks.
Something tells me you just had a huge craving for coffee.
Your argument about the measurement of success reminds me of the book, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig. A couple of the chapters talk about a hypothetical character who is obsessed with trying to quantify quality in art, and suffers a bit of a mental breakdown because of it.
In short, you really can't quantify quality in art. But there are a number of things which are essential to any given genre. And many of those things are simply not in this latest slew of MMO releases. Overall quality matches or exceeds previously beloved titles like pre-cu SWG-Rubberband Edition. But bugs rarely make or break a game. Immersion and fun make a game, and long term immersion and fun are essential to an MMO.
What most of the these latest games have in common, from a success standpoint, is that they have no lack of sold boxes and initial sales. But where they fail is in the ability to retain those subs. In short, the games are failing to "suck you in" and keep you for more than a few months, if that.
For STO, I can give the most clear reason: Once you complete the content, you are locked out of the best areas of the game. You've done all the episode and patrol missions(the best part) of the game; what's left of the ST world? You have the space stations, which are small and mostly utilitarian with minimal immersion(the main station Sol, has 1.5 floors? REALLY???). You have the static galactic map, which by its own design has little to do with a "world". You have "defend" missions. And you have the mostly dull "exploration" missions. Lastly, you have PVP against a faction which doesn't have enough content to advance to commander, let alone RA5. So you can wait in a queue of hundreds of federation folks to chase around the dozen brave souls who are klingons, or become a klingon and get decimated by guys twice your level over and over again.
NONE of this points to a world anyone would care to stay in. Initially enjoy, sure, but NO reason to stay, when 80% of the "world" and its content are locked out. And that's not too big of a world to begin with.
Do I need to explain the point of that story? I think most people will get it. Fame and riches do not EQUAL highest quality. Fame and riches do, however, often equal the best marketing for the buck. And so much is subjective anyway. So we measure success by money, because it's something that can BE measured, and then we ASSUME that whoever has the most moolah MUST be "the best." And very often....that is inaccurate. But....c'est la vie, I suppose.
Many of us Americans are a bit jaded about the notion of quality, even in those things in which it can be quantified. I owned a '93 Dodge(not a name synonymous with quality) Shadow that I paid $10,700 for new, that put up with 15 years of Michigan winters and started every time I turned the key. On the other hand, I know a guy who owned an E-class Mercedes which wouldn't start after he spilled water on the console. Clothes it would seem are often the same way, where the higher the quality and the higher the cost, the greater the fragility.
Quality, it seems, can often be impractical... ah but this analogy brought us a bit off topic... back to your regularly scheduled flamefest...
For instance....Starbucks. FFS they are PROUD of their product, aren't they? But I used to work in a coffeehouse in Overland Park (upper class area of Kansas City on the Kansas side) that had the absolute best espresso you have ever tasted other than maybe Illy from Italy, but Illy is 40 bucks a pound, so..... Anyway, it wasn't bitter like Starbucks, it was sweet, and smooth, and clean tasting and nutty and smelled like HEAVEN. It had a crema that was like satin. It was a blend made by the owners of La Dolce Vita. They traveled all over the world to get the best blend of coffee beans for their espresso blend, and boy....the difference in taste was astounding. BUT....they are a middle aged couple, wealthy, yes....but do they have the finances to compete with STARBUCKS in marketing??? No way in hell.
I tell you what though....that was one BUSY coffeehouse. And Pat and Leslie made a fortune within a few years. And there was a Starbucks right across the street that ended up closing DOWN because of La Dolce Vita. The coffee was THAT good. But you know what....none of you people had EVER heard of them. And I bet EVERYONE here has heard of Starbucks.
This is why I dislike analogies, because they introduce or ignore factors and just do not represent the topic well.
Sorry...I'm not a rocket scientist. I'm just venting my personal frustration and opinion on the matter like everyone else in the thread. I apologize if you don't like my lame analogies. I know they are imperfect, and I hope you'll forgive me for not being able to craft a perfect analogy.
Of course no one has heard of this little sole-proprietor coffee shop near you any more than they you have heard of the local coffee shop near my home that I think is fabulous. Yet I don't think that entitles me to talk down to you and everyone here as if they are somehow uninformed about the entire market and translate that into ignorance of mmos.
Having heard of the coffeehouse wasn't the POINT. And I wasn't "talking down" to anyone, nor did I ever imply anyone was "uninformed" about MMOs...I'm not sure how you got THAT from what I wrote. I'm sorry if you perceived it that way. I was trying to illustrate that just because something isn't widely known, or hugely financially successful, like WoW or Starbucks....doesn't mean it's not GOOD, or even GREAT. I'm not sure how you translated that into "talking down" to anyone, but okay. I apologize if you interpreted it that way somehow. (I'm pretty confused as to how you read all that into what I wrote.)
I'm sure starbucks started out just like your little coffee shop did and built into the empire it is today without some massive advertising budget to draw on. Starbucks offered a better product for its time and grew like crazy, just like it can happen with the local little coffee shops of the world.
If there is some little mmo that offers far superior gameplay and quality than what the big names offer, then word of mouth will spread and the game should do well. However I just don't think the mmo market is filled with examples that mimic your little coffee shop which is where the analogy continues to break down.
Yes....that is my point. Why is the latest crop of games failing? They bring nothing superior to the table. La Dolce Vita succeeded. No, they are not an international success...they probably never will be. But they succeeded in the tiny market that they WANTED to succeed in...the local one (call it a niche market)...by having a superior product, competitively priced, and accessible to the people in that market area.
But of course, you're right. It's not the perfect analogy, but I wasn't aware this was a college thesis paper I was writing here. I'm just trying to vent my own frustration over the state of the genre, and voice my opinion in the best way I know how. I guess since I suck at analogies, I should probably try to state my opinion without using them, but I pretty much type the same way I talk and I just type what I'm thinking. I must be really bad at communicating since apparently most of what I say makes no sense to anyone but me.
On second thought....screw that.
I'll use analogies any time I want to, and if someone doesn't like it...too bad. My analogies may not be perfect, but half the people on these boards can't spell worth a toot either, and yet...I don't bring that to their attention. I just try to understand what it is they're trying to say and move on.
So...tough titties you didn't like my analogy. :P lol
Now...back to the bar fight....err....flame war....or whatever it is we're participating in here.
I never said your analogy wasn't perfect, I said I dislike analogies period. They just don't work and almost always do not represent the situation correctly. It isn't anything personal, they just suck and litter decent threads with misleading information and flawed comparisons. Suddenly people are arguing about coffee or something else and the issues are so screwed up it just ends up in plain silliness.
I am however, right next to you with the frustration with the current market. Sorry if I came off with a barbed tongue, but your last line sort of felt like you were talking down to people. I often come off sounding harsh when I don't mean to. My apologies.
Bottom line on all of this is that WoW is only still successful because successor games to the genre have been dismal at best
Tabula Rasa stole a few away for the first month but after promises made became If not when they flocked back.
DDO Original gathered up alot from WoW but at the end of the day and the end of the leveling there wasn't much to be done so some choice few stayed and most went back.
EVE Online gains popularity and reknown, WAR Hits and people who loved Warhammer Fantasy flock to it like Seagulls to well...you know.
Unfortunately EVE Online has a learning curve larger than the circumference of the entire planet and WAR doesn't know what it's doing from one day to the next.
So far nobody has come to Steal Blizzard's thunder...But there's some Major MAJOR games in the pipeline that IF done well with addictive mechanics and Not ignored on its backstory (War40k MMO). They'll likely rival WoW and dare I say exceed it If done right.
Current mature crop of games are iffy at best, I mean sure Fallen Earth is interesting and Global Agenda brings the MMOFPS/RPG hybrid genre to light but at the end of it all there won't be anything Show stopping awesome for a while...
At least until FFXIV, The Secret World, Earthrise, and a couple other titles ease onto to the scene then Release with a bang.
As for F2P Allods Online raised the bar as far as graphics go but everything else was SO bad no amount of beauty can rescue it from it's inevitable doom.
FEZ (Fantasy Earth Zero) would have been super great if the game itself was more like the cinematic rather than something that belongs in the abandonwarez section of the internet for being so dated Parachute pants are newer.
It does seem like BIGGER titles are all about the company turning a quick buck and chucking it into the garbage to work on it's next cash cow. I just wish they'd realize that when they get a HIT instead of a Miss they need to stop looking at immediate returns and into long term gains. I'm fairly certain had Allods realized this sooner they'd be better off than they are now.
I'm just playing whatever personally til The Secret World, Earthrise, and WH40k MMO hit.
There are probably many reasons why the new batch of MMOs has failed. I think it is that they are no longer as unique and innovative as the original MMOs. The earliest games are the greatest in the genre and are certainly hard to best. I speak of course of the established MMOs. World of Warcraft, Aion, Ryzom, and LOTRO and many others have innovative features that these newer MMOs probably haven't been able to match.
I don't think the lack of greater success has to do with any of the listed choices. It's a lack of innovation. Too many players get bored playing variations of the same game over and over, and MMOs are the most stagnant genre in all of gaming.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
To me they are failing Because they are makeing Games and Not Worlds. A Game is fun for a little while. A world can Take years to fully Explore and Conquer.
I keep coming back to this. I had never wanted a game to succeed more than I did with Warhammer. But when Marc Jacobs came out and stated that they were categorically making a game and not a world I became worried and it turned out to be one of the worst of the current crop.
It is much easier to set a game in a world than to create a world for a game. I just don't understand why the developers don't understand this.
I never said your analogy wasn't perfect, I said I dislike analogies period. They just don't work and almost always do not represent the situation correctly. It isn't anything personal, they just suck and litter decent threads with misleading information and flawed comparisons. Suddenly people are arguing about coffee or something else and the issues are so screwed up it just ends up in plain silliness.
I am however, right next to you with the frustration with the current market. Sorry if I came off with a barbed tongue, but your last line sort of felt like you were talking down to people. I often come off sounding harsh when I don't mean to. My apologies.
Join the club. Really....you were right, and I'm just a cranky old bat lately. The topic of the thread...just kind of made me crankier than my usual snarky / cranky self. lol =D
I dont think they are failing, just appeal to a niche in the MMO market. Will be interesting to see what type if game can appeal to a broader audience and really be considered the next real "big game", or if that WoW kinda success can ever be truly recreated.
Failure to make a game that caters to a niche over trying to please everyone all the time......
You do not need to have 11kk subs, to be a game that would be profitable, but you have to have some direction, and the ability not to fuck over your player base for your shareholders. There are plenty of games that would have done very well if they stuck to a core idea.
Comments
To be quite frank..most MMO companies don't give a crap about putting out quality games anymore. Look at Cryptic. They rushed Champions out the door as well as STO when the community told them it wasn't ready. They were selling pre-orders and lifetime memberships before the game ever got out of beta. If they put half the polish and care into their game as they did into their PR/Marketing those games might have been good. (even now, though, Cryptic fails at Marketing).
World of Warcraft continues to move along, but you can tell the past expansion was a drop in quality. The game was so easy my 9 yr old daughter could do it and raid if she wanted too. It was boring. The follow the same formula when it comes to new quest zones/hubs and there really isn't any challenge for guilds anymore there.
LoTR was an interesting game, but nothing special. I enjoyed my time playing it, but it just didn't have anything extra to keep me playing it. The PvP monster thing was just plain stupid. I expected more, but it just seemed like just another MMO to me. DDO was another miss Turbine had. I didn't like it before it went F2P and tried to enjoy it afterwards and just gave up. They should have put the game in the Forgotten Realms universe instead of Eberron.
Most of the games I see on this site are all just boring clones of each other. So many games and nothing stands out from one another. Everytime a game gets some hype some developer just fails to deliver. Look at Aion or Vanguard. Both could probably have been good games, but the companies developing them are clueless.
All the F2P games are grindfests or you have to purchase things in cash shops to actually play at higher levels. Perfect World Entertainment drives me nuts how they do their games. I actually am hoping Forsaken World is going to be different, but I know it won't be. Allods is a bloody mess even now after the cash shop issues. It's flooded with spammers and the upcoming patches are going to ruin the game unless Gpotato decides to scrap some of the new patch features/game code. Only real decent F2P MMO I have played recently was Earth Eternal. It was cartoony and a browser game, but it was kinda fun. Still nothing to set it apart from most of the pack.
You know, at this point in the development of MMO's I just wish we had a game like Neverwinter Nights. I don't mean the premise of that game, but the fact a person could use the toolset together and make their own game worlds and a huge community shared resources to build things. Sometimes I just wish I could code lol. I want a game that players can actually affect how things happen in the game world. Not some stupid static world. Star Wars Galaxies at least allowed people to build there own towns and other things in game. Haven't seen a decent crafting system since then. Where is the creativity in games today? Stop being clones and be original.
The United States....has ISSUES. Here, it's all about the Almighty Dollar and....AND....being "popular," and "cool." Marketing is KING here. If you have the money to market, like for instance....Folger's Coffee....people will BUY it. Companies sell the "cool factor" the popularity factor, and quality...REAL quality...is not as important to most people as having the coolest, latest, most advertised "thing." People want the "thing" that their neighbors have seen advertised and thought "Ooo...I'd like to have that." "OMG...look honey, the Joneses bought that car we saw advertised on television!" (Or they play that COOL game, World of Warcraft, you know...the one Mr. T plays!)
Foldgers is NOT cool.
But what Foldgers is is accessible and convenient, and it got that way by being one of the oldest coffee companies in America and merging with bigger and bigger companies so that it can be distributed nationally. Rest assured, if La Dolce Vita was located on every other street corner and available in most stores, we Americans would snatch it up.
That in mind, which do you think sounds "cooler"? La Dolce Vita, or Foldgers?
I don't think you know quite what drives Americans and their buying habits, at least from what I can tell from this paragraph. Americans are far more driven by convenience and affordability, often at the price of quality. Look no further than CD's and MP3, for example. MP3 is inferior in quality, no question, yet CD sales are dropping, and digital downloads are rising. And I doubt this is much different than the rest of the world.
And this is why Facebook browser games are getting hugely popular, despite the fact that they are total crap. People find that after they've posted to their wall, lying about how much they love their family, friends, and how cute their kids all are, in one click they can access a silly little time wasting minigame which allows them to hide from all those people.
For instance....Starbucks. FFS they are PROUD of their product, aren't they? But I used to work in a coffeehouse in Overland Park (upper class area of Kansas City on the Kansas side) that had the absolute best espresso you have ever tasted other than maybe Illy from Italy, but Illy is 40 bucks a pound, so..... Anyway, it wasn't bitter like Starbucks, it was sweet, and smooth, and clean tasting and nutty and smelled like HEAVEN. It had a crema that was like satin. It was a blend made by the owners of La Dolce Vita. They traveled all over the world to get the best blend of coffee beans for their espresso blend, and boy....the difference in taste was astounding. BUT....they are a middle aged couple, wealthy, yes....but do they have the finances to compete with STARBUCKS in marketing??? No way in hell.
I tell you what though....that was one BUSY coffeehouse. And Pat and Leslie made a fortune within a few years. And there was a Starbucks right across the street that ended up closing DOWN because of La Dolce Vita. The coffee was THAT good. But you know what....none of you people had EVER heard of them. And I bet EVERYONE here has heard of Starbucks.
Something tells me you just had a huge craving for coffee.
Your argument about the measurement of success reminds me of the book, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig. A couple of the chapters talk about a hypothetical character who is obsessed with trying to quantify quality in art, and suffers a bit of a mental breakdown because of it.
In short, you really can't quantify quality in art. But there are a number of things which are essential to any given genre. And many of those things are simply not in this latest slew of MMO releases. Overall quality matches or exceeds previously beloved titles like pre-cu SWG-Rubberband Edition. But bugs rarely make or break a game. Immersion and fun make a game, and long term immersion and fun are essential to an MMO.
What most of the these latest games have in common, from a success standpoint, is that they have no lack of sold boxes and initial sales. But where they fail is in the ability to retain those subs. In short, the games are failing to "suck you in" and keep you for more than a few months, if that.
For STO, I can give the most clear reason: Once you complete the content, you are locked out of the best areas of the game. You've done all the episode and patrol missions(the best part) of the game; what's left of the ST world? You have the space stations, which are small and mostly utilitarian with minimal immersion(the main station Sol, has 1.5 floors? REALLY???). You have the static galactic map, which by its own design has little to do with a "world". You have "defend" missions. And you have the mostly dull "exploration" missions. Lastly, you have PVP against a faction which doesn't have enough content to advance to commander, let alone RA5. So you can wait in a queue of hundreds of federation folks to chase around the dozen brave souls who are klingons, or become a klingon and get decimated by guys twice your level over and over again.
NONE of this points to a world anyone would care to stay in. Initially enjoy, sure, but NO reason to stay, when 80% of the "world" and its content are locked out. And that's not too big of a world to begin with.
Do I need to explain the point of that story? I think most people will get it. Fame and riches do not EQUAL highest quality. Fame and riches do, however, often equal the best marketing for the buck. And so much is subjective anyway. So we measure success by money, because it's something that can BE measured, and then we ASSUME that whoever has the most moolah MUST be "the best." And very often....that is inaccurate. But....c'est la vie, I suppose.
Many of us Americans are a bit jaded about the notion of quality, even in those things in which it can be quantified. I owned a '93 Dodge(not a name synonymous with quality) Shadow that I paid $10,700 for new, that put up with 15 years of Michigan winters and started every time I turned the key. On the other hand, I know a guy who owned an E-class Mercedes which wouldn't start after he spilled water on the console. Clothes it would seem are often the same way, where the higher the quality and the higher the cost, the greater the fragility.
Quality, it seems, can often be impractical... ah but this analogy brought us a bit off topic... back to your regularly scheduled flamefest...
This is why I dislike analogies, because they introduce or ignore factors and just do not represent the topic well.
Sorry...I'm not a rocket scientist. I'm just venting my personal frustration and opinion on the matter like everyone else in the thread. I apologize if you don't like my lame analogies. I know they are imperfect, and I hope you'll forgive me for not being able to craft a perfect analogy.
Of course no one has heard of this little sole-proprietor coffee shop near you any more than they you have heard of the local coffee shop near my home that I think is fabulous. Yet I don't think that entitles me to talk down to you and everyone here as if they are somehow uninformed about the entire market and translate that into ignorance of mmos.
Having heard of the coffeehouse wasn't the POINT. And I wasn't "talking down" to anyone, nor did I ever imply anyone was "uninformed" about MMOs...I'm not sure how you got THAT from what I wrote. I'm sorry if you perceived it that way. I was trying to illustrate that just because something isn't widely known, or hugely financially successful, like WoW or Starbucks....doesn't mean it's not GOOD, or even GREAT. I'm not sure how you translated that into "talking down" to anyone, but okay. I apologize if you interpreted it that way somehow. (I'm pretty confused as to how you read all that into what I wrote.)
I'm sure starbucks started out just like your little coffee shop did and built into the empire it is today without some massive advertising budget to draw on. Starbucks offered a better product for its time and grew like crazy, just like it can happen with the local little coffee shops of the world.
If there is some little mmo that offers far superior gameplay and quality than what the big names offer, then word of mouth will spread and the game should do well. However I just don't think the mmo market is filled with examples that mimic your little coffee shop which is where the analogy continues to break down.
Yes....that is my point. Why is the latest crop of games failing? They bring nothing superior to the table. La Dolce Vita succeeded. No, they are not an international success...they probably never will be. But they succeeded in the tiny market that they WANTED to succeed in...the local one (call it a niche market)...by having a superior product, competitively priced, and accessible to the people in that market area.
But of course, you're right. It's not the perfect analogy, but I wasn't aware this was a college thesis paper I was writing here. I'm just trying to vent my own frustration over the state of the genre, and voice my opinion in the best way I know how. I guess since I suck at analogies, I should probably try to state my opinion without using them, but I pretty much type the same way I talk and I just type what I'm thinking. I must be really bad at communicating since apparently most of what I say makes no sense to anyone but me.
On second thought....screw that.
I'll use analogies any time I want to, and if someone doesn't like it...too bad. My analogies may not be perfect, but half the people on these boards can't spell worth a toot either, and yet...I don't bring that to their attention. I just try to understand what it is they're trying to say and move on.
So...tough titties you didn't like my analogy. :P lol
Now...back to the bar fight....err....flame war....or whatever it is we're participating in here.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
I never said your analogy wasn't perfect, I said I dislike analogies period. They just don't work and almost always do not represent the situation correctly. It isn't anything personal, they just suck and litter decent threads with misleading information and flawed comparisons. Suddenly people are arguing about coffee or something else and the issues are so screwed up it just ends up in plain silliness.
I am however, right next to you with the frustration with the current market. Sorry if I came off with a barbed tongue, but your last line sort of felt like you were talking down to people. I often come off sounding harsh when I don't mean to. My apologies.
Bottom line on all of this is that WoW is only still successful because successor games to the genre have been dismal at best
Tabula Rasa stole a few away for the first month but after promises made became If not when they flocked back.
DDO Original gathered up alot from WoW but at the end of the day and the end of the leveling there wasn't much to be done so some choice few stayed and most went back.
EVE Online gains popularity and reknown, WAR Hits and people who loved Warhammer Fantasy flock to it like Seagulls to well...you know.
Unfortunately EVE Online has a learning curve larger than the circumference of the entire planet and WAR doesn't know what it's doing from one day to the next.
So far nobody has come to Steal Blizzard's thunder...But there's some Major MAJOR games in the pipeline that IF done well with addictive mechanics and Not ignored on its backstory (War40k MMO). They'll likely rival WoW and dare I say exceed it If done right.
Current mature crop of games are iffy at best, I mean sure Fallen Earth is interesting and Global Agenda brings the MMOFPS/RPG hybrid genre to light but at the end of it all there won't be anything Show stopping awesome for a while...
At least until FFXIV, The Secret World, Earthrise, and a couple other titles ease onto to the scene then Release with a bang.
As for F2P Allods Online raised the bar as far as graphics go but everything else was SO bad no amount of beauty can rescue it from it's inevitable doom.
FEZ (Fantasy Earth Zero) would have been super great if the game itself was more like the cinematic rather than something that belongs in the abandonwarez section of the internet for being so dated Parachute pants are newer.
It does seem like BIGGER titles are all about the company turning a quick buck and chucking it into the garbage to work on it's next cash cow. I just wish they'd realize that when they get a HIT instead of a Miss they need to stop looking at immediate returns and into long term gains. I'm fairly certain had Allods realized this sooner they'd be better off than they are now.
I'm just playing whatever personally til The Secret World, Earthrise, and WH40k MMO hit.
There are probably many reasons why the new batch of MMOs has failed. I think it is that they are no longer as unique and innovative as the original MMOs. The earliest games are the greatest in the genre and are certainly hard to best. I speak of course of the established MMOs. World of Warcraft, Aion, Ryzom, and LOTRO and many others have innovative features that these newer MMOs probably haven't been able to match.
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I don't think the lack of greater success has to do with any of the listed choices. It's a lack of innovation. Too many players get bored playing variations of the same game over and over, and MMOs are the most stagnant genre in all of gaming.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
I keep coming back to this. I had never wanted a game to succeed more than I did with Warhammer. But when Marc Jacobs came out and stated that they were categorically making a game and not a world I became worried and it turned out to be one of the worst of the current crop.
It is much easier to set a game in a world than to create a world for a game. I just don't understand why the developers don't understand this.
Join the club.
Really....you were right, and I'm just a cranky old bat lately. The topic of the thread...just kind of made me crankier than my usual snarky / cranky self. lol =D
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I dont think they are failing, just appeal to a niche in the MMO market. Will be interesting to see what type if game can appeal to a broader audience and really be considered the next real "big game", or if that WoW kinda success can ever be truly recreated.
Failure to make a game that caters to a niche over trying to please everyone all the time......
You do not need to have 11kk subs, to be a game that would be profitable, but you have to have some direction, and the ability not to fuck over your player base for your shareholders. There are plenty of games that would have done very well if they stuck to a core idea.
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rev