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General: Five MMO Misconceptions
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com's Bill Murphy counts down five popular miconceptions about MMORPGs, from the obvious to the slightly more subtle.
#5 They're Just for Geeks
Whenever I'm in a new social situation and someone asks me about what I do for a living I tell them about my job with the Department of Veterans Affairs, to which they applaud me for helping our country's vets. When I add that I also write videogame-based articles for a site devoted to MMORPGs I get blank stares mixed with wary looks of "But-he-seemed-so-normal."
One of the most common misconceptions, and one that gamers in general still face (though admittedly less these days) is that MMOs are filled with only the most socially inept and maladapted people on the planet. It wasn't long ago that simply being above the age of twelve and enjoying videogames instantly labeled you a reject of society. Slowly but surely gaming is moving into the mainstream as "Geek Culture" takes center stage in the American mainstream. But for some reason MMORPG is still an acronym that many people seem to associate with basement-dwelling and eternally virginal loner.
Read Five MMO Misconceptions.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
Ugh, what a poor list. Talk about overcompensating for lack of site content.
MMORPGs ARE just for geeks, it's just that there are more geeks in the mainstream that previously thought. Just because [insert random celebrity here] plays MMOs doesn't mean they aren't geeks.
F2P's ARE crap. DDO comes close to being ok, but it's fully instanced and hardly an MMORPG. The rest are boring, trite, cash shop drivel.
MMOs AREN'T evolving...and least not now (they might in the future, let's hope so). Pick a recently released MMO and tell me how it's significantly different than its predecessors. You can't. As for future MMOs, they are vapor until they go beta, so sorry, you can't rely on those.
I repeat, "Ugh."
Because we all know F2P games don't offer you the pay to win route. But, hey, you only pay to win if you want to, the free to lose handicapped possibility is always there, they aren't pointing guns at your face ( though in PvP you might get tired of people pointing shiny weapons of doom that are only humanly acquirable in a reasonable amount of time if you spend money, or in PvE the much higher time leveling and farming to buy stuff).
The F2P = Crap may not really be true for 1% of the F2P games, but the first paragraph applies and make monthly fees look like a blessing from the heavens.
I agree with the rest, especially #4, so many people with the "this game is dying" trolling speech on games they stopped playing. Heck, we even see some threads saying WoW is gonna be dead before 2012 (they may be right though as the world as we know it may end, heh). It's fine to dislike a game and express that, but saying is going to die soon is plain arrogance, the only ones that could be able to speculate anything regarding a game death are the ones actually playing it (that is, if they aren't blind).
I dont agree with your other assessments but I do agree with the above.
Every person I know who plays video games or even online games is a bit geeky.
I have never known anyone who was not a bit geeky who played these things. In my past workplaces, not one "normal" person ever played video games.
Only those who were a bit "off" (in a good way of course) played these games.
Granted wow did open the the genre to people who might be considered a bit less geeky but all in all I would still say they were geeks.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Are you saying every WoW player is a geek? Because quite a few of the WoW players I've met in real life were not even close to being geeks the way I see it. They were just in for the ride because of this thing called pop culture.
I'm a big ol' fluffy carewolf. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
#5 - It unfortunate that this isn't so anymore. When it was the case MMOs were patterned fully after worlds with game systems including to that effect. Now, that it's gone mainstream, in order to cater to the larger non Geek population they have in my view watered MMOs down into accessible arcade games. While it's fine to include some games like that for variety it is not when the entire industry, especially those houses who have the actual money to make an MMO, is taking this arcady route.
#4 - I agree, as do most here. You're preaching to the choir. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to convince the CEOs of these AAA corporations, as well as their shareholders, of the same. This message will self destruct....
#3 - I can agree with this to an extent. I'll never be a member of Richard Aihoshi's Blue Kool-Aid Club in which F2P are the way of the future and everyone who doesn't love them in total are lesser human beings and deserve to be gas-chambered. But I'm sure there are a few out there that are ok.
#2 - Heh, on this one I have to agree. That stated, I firmly stand behind my view that they certainly aren't evolving for the better. They are devolving from the aspirations of creating a full world where players could define a role for themselves and build/tell their own story. I believe this ties into #5 a bit as the more folks you add that are less comfortable letting their imaginations take lead the less options you can put out there without having the backlash of "I don't understand this" or "Oh, that is boring".
#1 - Until the CEOs and shareholders realize this, it might as well have. Every major market endeavor will continue to closely mimic it because they want a piece of the pie. Sad thing is they will produce a game that is probably as buggy if not more than WoW was at release which will turn that target audience off and send them back to WoW. If anything these last couple of years have shown is that you truly never get a second chance to make a first impression so those games most likely never get back to near the number of subscriptions they have at launch.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
Are you saying every WoW player is a geek? Because quite a few of the WoW players I've met in real life were not even close to being geeks the way I see it. They were just in for the ride because of this thing called pop culture.
Possible. But in my experience the people who played wow who would normally not be considered "geeks" were still a bit geeky and it wasn't too hard for me to imagine them playing other games.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
didnt it all started with text gaming back in the 70s ?
It is tough to get WoW players to realize that nothing in WoW was new. It all existed in some MMO or another and they just took all the parts that worked from different games and shoved it into one.
There's nothing wrong with doing that, but it is ridiculous when the super fans don't realize WoW invented nothing in the genre. Not even their UI.
By definition evolution doesn't mean that something is majorly different than its predecessors. Evolution consists of small changes in the short-term that collectively account for the large variation in the long-term. In that sense mmos are evolving in my opinion.
I can agree a lot on point #1 not much new in wow for someone who played everquest, and now everything gives the wow feeling, hell most new games even have the same hotkey setups as default as wow, i got Aion a while ago and made it to lvl 3 and yawn felt like more of the same, games today don't stray to far from the wow path, guess that is why i still love anarchy online and i just started playing everquest again.
Free is crap.... DDO is about the worst example you could pick with respect to it being a failed P2P. Did it start as F2P well no.....
________________________________________________________
Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
Has gained quite a user base since going F2P though.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Thank you for posting this information. It is true that nothing in WoW on launch was new. It's a very common misconception that WoW reinvented the wheel, but as I've stated elsewhere on here it simply took what worked in previous titles (borrowing heavily from EQ, which Blizz has openly admitted) and refined those concepts into one single game.
Even the new changes that have been put in for the past few years aren't new ideas, they're Blizz's take on WoW mods that they find useful. Notable examples: Guild Calender, Equipment Manager, Quest Tracker. These were all mods before Blizz added these concepts into WoW.
To the OP: Thanks for this list, I agree (mostly) with it, besides the f2p part. DDO is notoriously gimped if you try to play it as a f2p subscriber. Less so since they removed lvling sigils, but you're still severely gimped if you don't pay the 15 dollars a month.
-Cym
# 5: MMOs ARE for geeks. Sorry.
#4: Who thinks that? Under 100K you can start talking about failure, but even then many games would love to have even 50K subs.
#3: Free IS crap. Mostly because very few free games have pursued a non-cash-shop free game.
#2: What revolutionary has happened in the past 4 or 5 years? I'm not claiming to know what would be revolutionary, but I know I ain't seen nothing really unique in a looong time.
#1: WoW "established" the genre. It wasn't first, and probably not the best, but it's the benchmark.
Are you saying every WoW player is a geek? Because quite a few of the WoW players I've met in real life were not even close to being geeks the way I see it. They were just in for the ride because of this thing called pop culture.
To geeks, someone only mildly geeky probably seems cool.
I say this as a geek myself.
Read Five MMO Misconceptions.
you are both correct and wrong on #5
you can pretty much in one way or another say that every one every single human being short of the parolized in in one way or another are a geek about something or other its just the way we are whether we want to admit itor not
hell even the parolized look at Stephen Hawking
even the "jock" is a geek they geek out about sports
trekies geek out about star trek
furrys geeok out about anthropomorphics and cartoons
gamers geek out about the latest video games or mmo's
techie geek out about the latest and greatest technology has to offer
and not all geeks only geek out on one subject very rarely does any one person only geek out about only one subject
but we do tend to have our true preference on what subjects we geek out over more
the odd part is the extreme in most of these will tend to dislike villainize or debase one or more of the others simply out of misunderstanding or false stereotypes or preconceived prejudices and mostly out of ignorance to the subject mater .
but thats a different conversation all together and im getting off my point but it makes for an interesting observation of an occurrence that is completely devoid of logic yet it still happens lol :P and is likely the source event that created the current slang definition of the word geek used to debase a "geek" by what other wise is just another form of geek lol :P (we humans are strange and illogical creatures :P )
my point is this every one in one way or another can be considered a geek its just the way we are
we find things that excite us or stimulate our intellectual interests and we stick to them passionately and some times even in rare cases violently
Well IMHO I don't think your list of gaming misconceptions really has the depth to change many if any opinions on games/gamers.
5. They're just for geeks.
Most of the world has shifted closer to geek than shifted away. There is also a pretty good chance in this day and age granny has got a google/yahoo email account where she and 100 of her online buddies all spammng bad jokes and kitty pictures back and forth. If anyone's computer crashes call my mom she's 70 and can have your machine wiped and rebuilt in a few hours. Just think 5 years ago she was calling every other day to pull some virus off. The world has shifted geek. Geek is a growing base no longer a 'niche'. People are far more savvy with tech than they are willing to admit to.
4. Under One Million Players=Failure
CCP started small with every intention to grow. Funding, development and launch was a design to start small and grow bigger. Minimize risk all along the way. For CCP it worked. AOC/Warhammer/Aion all started with massive budgets, big features, big marketing, big everything to draw the biggest crowds. Those games might have some success overseas but in North America they tanked, hard and fast. When you get your target audience and they start bailing inside of the 30 'free' days you have failed. Unable to balance factions, game mechanics don't function and game economy tank without the huge player base required. Huge budgets for huge games and peeps show but quit inside of the 30 days=failure. The real point here does the game generate enough cash to overcome the start up costs then hope to work on return on investment with an eye to possible game expansion. If not, it fails regardless of population.
3.Free=Crap
About the only f2p site I know of that fired up and never looked back isn't even a mmo. It's pogo.com. I've tried a few mmo f2p's and they all sucked balls. DDO as the shining example of a successful f2p? Someone here has already mentioned it. DDO was a failure p2p. A mish-mash of D&D rule sets launched with 2 weeks content, massive lag problems and broken ex-pac after broken ex-pac. Turbine did the only thing left for them to do to scrounge cash. That was to relaunch as a f2p. Even with the new rush of f2p players Turbine wont have the population to rebuild the lost servers or revenue. I just think DDO is a bad example of a f2p because really if you want to do anything in that game guess what your paying. Mind you that is the trap of all supposed f2p. F2p as a concept is a market ninjas wet dream. It is all free to play unless you want to have fun then guess what, you are paying.
2.MMOs aren't Evolving
There are not evolving. They are grabbing concepts and themes from those the have preceded them. The whole mmo genre is in a straight jacket. The start up costs are so out of this world you have to stay in the steps of those before you. No investor is gonna dump 20-50 million on you because you have a dream to do it all different. Furthermore we as players are straight jacketed by the way we think and react. We all are just wired little hamsters more than willing to hop on the hamster wheel if it means x number of revolutions = y rewards. Change the hamster wheel to a pair of runners and point at a road to jog and bang it don't happen. To much of a change. The number of miles pounded out for the reward of better health and fitness is blurred, so our little hamster brains scream danger be afraid be very afraid. BTW there are many great articles on the web on this very topic. Web search gamer theory, gamer theory rewards etc. They all stick to the tried and true, keep it in the middle of the road. That way it is all familiar to the investors and familiar to the hamsters. I think the problem with games nowadays is the cliche', familiarity breeds contempt.
1. World of Warcraft Invented the Genre.
WOW didn't invent the genre but you sure have to give credit where credit is due. They certainly grabbed the best designs and themes and refined them to a point where is all runs on a toaster giving access to the largest player base available. WOW has it down to a science on x revolutions = y rewards.
Cheers all.
In response to #3, I believe Guild Wars set the standard for F2P, if you count buying the game with no sub fee.
As to your point #1, uh, no.
WoW is an anomaly, not a benchmark. We will most likely never see the milestones WoW has achieved reached again.
The genre was well established before WoW reared it's head on the scene. UO, EQ1, AC1, AO, DAoC to name just a few games that were well populated, successful, and came way before WoW. Many of WoW's mechanics were lifted from these very games. Just because they didn't have eleventy billion subs doesn't mean they weren't instrumental in establishing the genre. WoW simply made the genre mainstream which is a genie I wish could be put back in the bottle.
I agree with the rest of your post though.
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!
Has gained quite a user base since going F2P though.
Because it's FREE.
Why does this point seem to completely race by so many people?
As I (and others) have stated in other threads...
DDO was floundering as a subscription-based MMO because few people (relatively speaking) found it worth a subscription fee. They changed to F2P and took away the subscription as a way to salvage it... and now suddenly people are propping it up as the Golden Child of the F2P market...
What changed about the game? Other than the addition of micro-transactions and removing mandatory sub fees? Nothing. I played the game for a month when it was sub-based. I tried it again when it went free. Nothing has changed... other than more people crowding the newbie areas making it feel even more claustrophobic than it already did.
Seriously... it's not very flattering to F2P games as a whole when a game designed and considered borderline failure as a sub-based game rises like a rocket to become its Star Game for so many people.
I'm not sure I'd be flattered to have that "honor" were my name on the game. Guess too many people are too busy saying "told you so!" to stop and think about it.
If you want to honor F2P as a valid payment model for MMOs, at least go with one that's full-in-the-wool F2P and was designed as one from the start; not one that started out as "something else" and changed to F2P only after floundering for months on end.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not hating on Turbine. I enjoyed my time playing AC1. I still wish AC2 hadn't shut down. I've had my share of fun in LoTRO and find it to be one of the most beautifully and thoroughly realized fantasy worlds (Tolkien or no) in the genre. I think DDO has some of the most clever dungeon design I've seen in any MMO. I'm glad they were able to turn DDO around and keep it going... They took a chance at something that could have blown up in their face, and it worked out. But none of that changes the circumstances that brought about DDO going F2P. It is what it is.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Has gained quite a user base since going F2P though.
Because it's FREE.
Why does this point seem to completely race by so many people?
As I (and others) have stated in other threads...
DDO was floundering as a subscription-based MMO because few people (relatively speaking) found it worth a subscription fee. They changed to F2P and took away the subscription as a way to salvage it... and now suddenly people are propping it up as the Golden Child of the F2P market...
What changed about the game? Other than the addition of micro-transactions and removing mandatory sub fees? Nothing. I played the game for a month when it was sub-based. I tried it again when it went free. Nothing has changed... other than more people crowding the newbie areas making it feel even more claustrophobic than it already did.
Seriously... it's not very flattering to F2P games as a whole when a game designed and considered borderline failure as a sub-based game rises like a rocket to become its Star Game for so many people.
I'm not sure I'd be flattered to have that "honor" were my name on the game. Guess too many people are too busy saying "told you so!" to stop and think about it.
If you want to honor F2P as a valid payment model for MMOs, at least go with one that's full-in-the-wool F2P and was designed as one from the start; not one that started out as "something else" and changed to F2P only after floundering for months on end.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not hating on Turbine. I enjoyed my time playing AC1. I still wish AC2 hadn't shut down. I've had my share of fun in LoTRO and find it to be one of the most beautifully and thoroughly realized fantasy worlds (Tolkien or no) in the genre. I think DDO has some of the most clever dungeon design I've seen in any MMO. I'm glad they were able to turn DDO around and keep it going... They took a chance at something that could have blown up in their face, and it worked out. But none of that changes the circumstances that brought about DDO going F2P. It is what it is.
Regardless of how DDO started, the F2P model that it uses now works both for the players (according to the rise in population) and for the company as they have also seen a major increase in revenue. The real point isnt where it started at, but that the model they currently use is viable and doesnt really fall into the same category as many other F2P models that do nothing but try to drain your wallet. If more games designed from the ground up as F2P used a similar model to DDO, i think we would see a lot more people willing to give F2P a real chance instead of just shunning them based on the obvious (due to all the misconceptions and untrue things they spew about why theyre bad) little to no experience that so many people have with them.
MMOs are becoming more mainstream, but a large part of that is that those of us who were "geeks" and played games of all types are now adults. Did the abnormal success of WoW and its accessibility help to bring games more into the mainstream? Yes. So did XBox live and dozens of other small things, but the fact remains that games overall are no longer a "niche" thing for basement-dwelling socially inept 14-year-old virgins.
No, WoW didn't create the genre. But the fact does remain that it did make it wildly successful and accessible to people who otherwise would not have considered touching an MMO. There is little new or inventive in WoW, true enough, but it has a fun factor, it does a good job of giving players a sense of achievement even after a short period of time playing (granted, it is almost 100% achievement and gear-based in order to do that, which is part of its down side), and all but the endgame raid content can be achieved in small chunks of playtime ranging anywhere from 30-90 minutes...which really, goes right back to the accessibility question. Is WoW a freak of MMO nature? Yes, by all accounts, including Blizzard's. That doesn't change the fact that it has broken down the doors of the genre in a very real way, for better or for worse.
Free does not have to mean crap. In some cases, it does. I won't deny that. There have been F2P games that have been so horrid that I haven't kept them on my system for more than 30 minutes. But there are others that are really good games. Guild Wars is F2P and frankly, it's not a bad game. DDO wasn't my cup of tea, but it's not a terrible game either in my opinion - it's just not a game that I enjoy playing on the computer (pen & paper D&D, on the other hand, I do enjoy from time to time). I've played decent F2P games such as Perfect World and I have played horrid ones whose names I have deliberately blocked from my mind. In the end, it comes down to personal preference and how much time and effort the developer chooses to put into their product. Even in subscription models, if a developer/publisher doesn't put in the time, work, and effort, the game can and will be crap, so F2P or subscription means less than the motivation of the publisher to put forth a quality product.
Firebrand Art
"You are obviously confusing a mature rating with actual maturity." -Asherman
Maybe MMO is not your genre, go play Modern Warfare...or something you can be all twitchy...and rank up all night. This is seriously getting tired. -Ranyr
I dont agree with your other assessments but I do agree with the above.
Every person I know who plays video games or even online games is a bit geeky.
I have never known anyone who was not a bit geeky who played these things. In my past workplaces, not one "normal" person ever played video games.
Only those who were a bit "off" (in a good way of course) played these games.
Granted wow did open the the genre to people who might be considered a bit less geeky but all in all I would still say they were geeks.
Wow, you two must not know a lot of people then. Most people I know have at least tried WoW, and not all of them were geeky in any way.
Interestingly, most who have tried to disagree with his 'misconceptions' I think have instead done an excellent job of illustrating the authors point.
Cheers too.
Regardless of how DDO started, the F2P model that it uses now works both for the players (according to the rise in population) and for the company as they have also seen a major increase in revenue. The real point isnt where it started at, but that the model they currently use is viable and doesnt really fall into the same category as many other F2P models that do nothing but try to drain your wallet. If more games designed from the ground up as F2P used a similar model to DDO, i think we would see a lot more people willing to give F2P a real chance instead of just shunning them based on the obvious (due to all the misconceptions and untrue things they spew about why theyre bad) little to no experience that so many people have with them.
I'm not knocking that it's worked out for them - as I said in my post... they took a chance and it worked. It could have just as easily blown up in their face. It's good to see a lot of people's hard work not go to waste with yet another cancelled MMO.
I just find it disingenuous how people are touting DDO as some kind of "definitive proof that quality MMOs work as F2P" considering how relatively poorly it was doing as P2P.
People are disingenuously describing Turbine changing DDO to F2P as a "brave" and "bold" and "brilliant" move, as though they "saw the light" and realized that "F2P is the way forward!", when the reality couldn't be farther from the truth.
DDO was struggling as a P2P MMO, it had a very small population and was, by many accounts, lumbering along. It simply didn't provide enough to warrant a subscription fee in many people's eyes, mine included. Their options, it could be surmised, were either let the game continue limping along, or try something radical and try to "relaunch" it as a F2P... which is what they did. And, again... kudos to them.. it worked out.
However... to tout it as some brilliant and bold move that "proves the validity of F2P" is patently absurd... If that were the case, then why the hell wouldn't they have done the same thing to LoTRO, which had a much healthier population? I think I have an idea.. Because the subscription model is working perfectly fine for that game; they don't *have* to screw with it.
I just can't believe how willfully ignorant people will be, and how blatantly they'll ignore well-documented and relatively recent history in order to rally behind something simply because they like it... without realizing that they're not "scoring points" for their cause with anyone who can put two and two together.
What's basically being stated here is... a game that was limping along and not performing well as a P2P is now the "rising star" of F2P. That's *not* the most flattering position to be in, when the best F2P MMO you have to put forward is a game that started out as a poorly performing P2P one.
DDO: "Not worth a subscription... But worth every penny as a free to play game!" - Yeah, that's something to brag about.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops