Before WoW came along, that "small minority" was enough to make companies and people rich. EverQuest had what, 600,000 subscribers? Dark Age of Camelot had 500,000? That's better than most MMOs today. And it took them less money to make, and less people. DAoC was made with THIRTY people, and it STILL has features that put modern day MMOs to shame.
Saying it's not possible, or companies can't make money aiming at the real MMORPG players, is just naive foolishness. Companies just don't want to try, because older MMOs take some design and balance skill.
I agree. Companies are just greedy. They think, why settle for a healthy 300.000 players when we can have millions? Of course, they cant really have millions because, and this is the part they hevent understood yet, is that if people want WoW, they play WoW, not whatever copy they created.
But as long as CCP is in business leading the way for other companies to brave new ground, its all good.
If you stand VERY still, and close your eyes, after a minute you can actually FEEL the universe revolving around PvP.
he's right about WoW though, the best part of the game was open world mass pvp, even if there was no rewards it was so awsome to just be running around and walk smack dab into the middle of a huge battle going on. Then blizzard chucked all that down the drain, and people like me who played the game for fun and not the elite armor quit.
Before WoW came along, that "small minority" was enough to make companies and people rich. EverQuest had what, 600,000 subscribers? Dark Age of Camelot had 500,000? That's better than most MMOs today. And it took them less money to make, and less people. DAoC was made with THIRTY people, and it STILL has features that put modern day MMOs to shame.
Saying it's not possible, or companies can't make money aiming at the real MMORPG players, is just naive foolishness. Companies just don't want to try, because older MMOs take some design and balance skill.
I agree. Companies are just greedy. They think, why settle for a healthy 300.000 players when we can have millions? Of course, they cant really have millions because, and this is the part they hevent understood yet, is that if people want WoW, they play WoW, not whatever copy they created.
But as long as CCP is in business leading the way for other companies to brave new ground, its all good.
Well CCP have said that they aim to see 600k subs by the FanFest of 2012, and that they're making design decisions on resource availability and game world scaling now based on getting a million subs. But of course there's all the difference in the world between expanding an existing game with a working economy and years of bugfixes and improvements to a million subs and hyping a million chumps into paying $49.99 to discover that your Day 1 game is barely out of Alpha testing.
he's right about WoW though, the best part of the game was open world mass pvp, even if there was no rewards it was so awsome to just be running around and walk smack dab into the middle of a huge battle going on. Then blizzard chucked all that down the drain, and people like me who played the game for fun and not the elite armor quit.
Well honestly, you could do this in EVERY MMORPG that has a PvP server. I hold the statement that WoW wasn't ever anything really special.
he's right about WoW though, the best part of the game was open world mass pvp, even if there was no rewards it was so awsome to just be running around and walk smack dab into the middle of a huge battle going on. Then blizzard chucked all that down the drain, and people like me who played the game for fun and not the elite armor quit.
Well honestly, you could do this in EVERY MMORPG that has a PvP server. I hold the statement that WoW wasn't ever anything really special.
I agree with this statement. WoW is Blizzard doing what it is best at. Taking existing concepts and ideas and making it readily available. And that is what drew in so many people to the genre. Good for the devs, more money for them, bad for us existing MMORPG fans as it redefined the genre, to the worse imo.
There is not one single innovative feature in WoW unless you see instancing as such, I sure do not, and even then I dont know if Blizzard was the first one doing instances.
And the effect WoW had on the industry is huge. AoC combat was simplified and dumbed down to better match the simple combat of WoW, WAR was redefined to be more like WoW than DAoC/Warhammer. LOTRO was redefined from being a virtual Middle Earth to be a WoW clone set in Middle Earth. Aion is a mix of WoW and Lineage 2. Star Trek Online and Champions Online took instancing and low death penalty, again which started with WoW, to the extreme.
The only game released in recent times and which does not heavily borrow from WoW is Darkfall and that game is bad for many other reasons. So really, what major MMORPG has been released after WoW which is not a linear, casual, instanced themepark?
I just hope that one of the upcoming sandbox titles can be good enough to keep my subscritpion for a while. Back in the day sandbox as a type was a lot more popular but once WOW came out and other developers saw how much money Blizzard made then it's been like an avalanche of class / experience based games. It's sad when I can count the successful sandbox games on one hand (UO, SWG (pre-NGE), EVE online and Fallen Earth). I'm just glad we have a few sandbox games in current development and hopefully we'll get some good titles out of them.
I'm still thinking maybe Mortal Online will fix their problems and end up with a worthy title.. but if not then EarthRise also seems interesting.
Understanding that this applies differently to each individual, I agree with the thread topic. SWG(Pre-NGE) was the last game I can remember playing where I felt that I would continue playing until they brought the servers completely down. Well, the NGE in essence did that for me.
Now, the only title I'm looking forward to with kid-like enthusiasm is World of Darkness Online. Mike B just posted a video of CCP using PhysX and APEX and it is very clear that the art assets used are that of World of Darkness Online. If CCP gets 50% of the game mechanics I like in this title I'll subscribe for the duration.
I just need to start doing whatever voodoo it is that has gotten me into all the past betas. I don't see myself having any issues generating constructive feedback and posting suggestions for this one!
"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..."
6 months ago I would have agreed with you, the last several years have bought almost most A-Tittle MMO's, the last being Aion and Champions Online, both didn't capture that MMORPG fibe for me, slightly more then 6 months ago I was in the Fallen Earth beta, but noticed like most gamers I had become spoiled in how easy this genre was becoming and the beta didn't click with me right away, mainly due to the end of it aswell being a open beta which brought the not my kind of community in game, then when the game was released I gave it another try, community definitly changed allot to me and since then am hooked with it still today. Fallen Earth has almost everything I want from a MMORPG, obviously it can become even more, but to me it beats almost any MMORPG released the last couple of years from these A-Tittle company's, which is as stated personal and has nothing to do with amount of subs or what ever but pure based on the fun I have with this game compared to the not fun I had with those A-Tittle games.
FC-FamineFuncom Community ManagerMemberUncommonPosts: 278
Originally posted by Unintended
Just sickens me that I've wasted 5 years of my life waiting for nothing because developers don't have a clue. All these people being paid millions and yet I could do a better job. Star Wars Galaxies had the right idea, it just wasn't pulled off because SOE are clueless.
I think gaming really is dead to me now, it has all gone down hill since this casual gamer craze and all the good PC franchises went to console.
[Mod Edit]
Interesting topic. I was trying to think of some nifty response for not just our developers, but all developers everywhere.
I will just say that I've been playing online games since the late 90's. I've experienced most of the North American titles that were popular in that region. It was only a few years back that I really started expanding across different styles of online gaming that appeals to different regional markets. So you could say that I've had my share of needs and wants too.
When it comes to development and deciding what a game needs, developers have to make some hard choices. It's not easy trying to plan the next big patch or update for your live game. If it was that easy, then maybe this post wouldn't exist and every player would be happy! But that's not realistic because it's damn hard to keep a game going while being attractive and positive towards their current players and future players.
Not everything goes according to plan though. There is no '5-step' easy guide to maintaining a MMO and keeping players happy. You will eventually piss people off and have to rethink about your original plans. It happens all the time, no matter the game. We're a relatively new genre that's still trying to perfect how we create and maintain our games. So there will be bumps and quality checks as we progress as a whole into better games and diverse games.
Glen ''Famine'' Swan Senior Assistant Community Manager - Funcom
Just sickens me that I've wasted 5 years of my life waiting for nothing because developers don't have a clue. All these people being paid millions and yet I could do a better job. Star Wars Galaxies had the right idea, it just wasn't pulled off because SOE are clueless.
I think gaming really is dead to me now, it has all gone down hill since this casual gamer craze and all the good PC franchises went to console.
[Mod Edit]
Interesting topic. I was trying to think of some nifty response for not just our developers, but all developers everywhere.
I will just say that I've been playing online games since the late 90's. I've experienced most of the North American titles that were popular in that region. It was only a few years back that I really started expanding across different styles of online gaming that appeals to different regional markets. So you could say that I've had my share of needs and wants too.
When it comes to development and deciding what a game needs, developers have to make some hard choices. It's not easy trying to plan the next big patch or update for your live game. If it was that easy, then maybe this post wouldn't exist and every player would be happy! But that's not realistic because it's damn hard to keep a game going while being attractive and positive towards their current players and future players.
Not everything goes according to plan though. There is no '5-step' easy guide to maintaining a MMO and keeping players happy. You will eventually piss people off and have to rethink about your original plans. It happens all the time, no matter the game. We're a relatively new genre that's still trying to perfect how we create and maintain our games. So there will be bumps and quality checks as we progress as a whole into better games and diverse games.
One of the biggest failures of the past couple years amongst companies has been their customer service and support. While putting an effort back into this won't make everything all better or solve everyone's issues there are a lot of companies over the past few years that could have done a lot more to alleviate players concerns to a degree and probably have lessened the fallout of subs to their games if more of an effort was put back into this area by some companies.
At least for me that has been one of the biggest failures and downfalls in a lot of newer mmos. Companies, for the most part, are completely letting this side of the equation go and it not only shows in their product but their retention rate to these games as well.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
FC-FamineFuncom Community ManagerMemberUncommonPosts: 278
Originally posted by Wickedjelly
Originally posted by FC-Famine
Originally posted by Unintended
One of the biggest failures of the past couple years amongst companies has been their customer service and support. While putting an effort back into this won't make everything all better or solve everyone's issues there are a lot of companies over the past few years that could have done a lot more to alleviate players concerns to a degree and probably have lessened the fallout of subs to their games if more of an effort was put back into this area by some companies.
At least for me that has been one of the biggest failures and downfalls in a lot of newer mmos. Companies, for the most part, are completely letting this side of the equation go and it not only shows in their product but their retention rate to these games as well.
Indeed, that's a honest opinion of course.
The big thing is that equation you mentioned. It's hard to see the entire equation looking from the outside in. Players can't see the full picture behind any developer or publisher out there. You can only see what's through more public channels or outlets like forums, press and official channels like support or portals. The developer and publisher on the other hand are looking from the inside out. For example, they know how changes or even support impacts subscriptions and time spent in game. Players on the opposite end, cannot see such statistics unless predicting.
I'm not trying to justify that all bad things (in your opinion) are really good because you can't see the big picture looking from the outside in. I'm just trying to clarify that sometimes things are not intentional or even clueless because it's not easy trying to maintain the balance. Ultimately, it comes down to a dozen of very annoying things that can sometimes makes hard choices even harder (i.e.: changes developers know you will not like but have to do it). It can even come down to a dozen of very exciting things that just turn upside down and become supper annoying or bad (i.e.: changes you hate but developers thought were good). That's mainly because both the people looking from the inside out need to correctly bridge with the people looking from the outside in (i.e.: knowing versus the unknown).
You can say that's why positions like mine even exist.
Glen ''Famine'' Swan Senior Assistant Community Manager - Funcom
Although I guess it was over once they went fully to the instance model of PvE.. Old WoW used to have a mix of World Spawn PVE and instanced, but they went to complete instancing
Guess the newb guilds couldn't handle competing over World Spawns? Maybe they wanted to give more welfare epics to more players. Dunno
EQ was the last decent MMORPG. Everything since then has been a kids MMORPG.
Just sickens me that I've wasted 5 years of my life waiting for nothing because developers don't have a clue. All these people being paid millions and yet I could do a better job. Star Wars Galaxies had the right idea, it just wasn't pulled off because SOE are clueless.
I think gaming really is dead to me now, it has all gone down hill since this casual gamer craze and all the good PC franchises went to console.
[Mod Edit]
Interesting topic. I was trying to think of some nifty response for not just our developers, but all developers everywhere.
I will just say that I've been playing online games since the late 90's. I've experienced most of the North American titles that were popular in that region. It was only a few years back that I really started expanding across different styles of online gaming that appeals to different regional markets. So you could say that I've had my share of needs and wants too.
When it comes to development and deciding what a game needs, developers have to make some hard choices. It's not easy trying to plan the next big patch or update for your live game. If it was that easy, then maybe this post wouldn't exist and every player would be happy! But that's not realistic because it's damn hard to keep a game going while being attractive and positive towards their current players and future players.
Not everything goes according to plan though. There is no '5-step' easy guide to maintaining a MMO and keeping players happy. You will eventually piss people off and have to rethink about your original plans. It happens all the time, no matter the game. We're a relatively new genre that's still trying to perfect how we create and maintain our games. So there will be bumps and quality checks as we progress as a whole into better games and diverse games.
I don't believe that because most of the reasons they have ruined mmorpgs in the past were all badly taken by the community. All they had to do was admit they were wrong and not let their egos get in the way, instead the developers were stupid and decided to kill their game.
Planetside got some stupid expansion that was three months in development and it was just crap. They released it to test servers two weeks before launch, which was the only testing it got and noone liked it. Instead of scraping it and working on what the players actually wanted, they pushed it and then put nothing more into the game until BFRS. Which nobody liked when they were on test and yet they pushed it anyways. All they had to do was work on new base designs and tech updates, which is what the community wanted. By tech updates I mean better hardware so battles can keep on growing and better graphics like what EVE does, so it feels fresh as FPS is all about the graphics. Instead they just let the game die cause SOE had no clue and speaking to some developers they said most of their budget got butchered to feed EQ2 and SWG.
With Star Wars Galaxies again we have the same problem of publishes being pushed even though everyone hated them. They pushed things that clearly broke the game and ruined a sense of immersion like reducing starport times or adding quick travel with JTLS or TEF. They pushed them two crap expansions along with the CU and the NGE which nobody wanted. I mean they were all on test and EVERYONE hated them and especially the NGE, it was buggy as hell and broke the whole game. It didn't improve the game and it didn't make it any easier for new players. What woulda made things easier is a proper tutorial, but they still couldn't do that with the NGE, it teaches you nothing about the game. People were leaving that game because it had no content, not because the profession system was too complex, because it wasn't.
EQ died because they got greedy and decided to release and expansion every year and then two every year. That Luclin and PoP expansions were buggy as hell and killed what many people loved about EQ.
Even your game Age of Conan... I fail to see how noone in that development looked at it and thought "this game is bad" as you were developing it. I mean people like seamless worlds and WoW has a seamless world. Yet Age of Conan has a loading screen every 30 seconds and feels more like a single player game. How did noone pick up on that in design?
I just think the people in charge have no clue of how you should run a persistent world. CCP have gotten it right so far and while I don't like the UI and how they've ignored problems for years, that doesn't mean they haven't run that game amazingly well. They've never made game breaking changes to the world and they've always asked the community and kept things balanced. They would never release instant travel that breaks the feeling of the size of the galaxy in that game.
I just don't get how they can't see this and I don't get how they can't introduce MT properly. MT is perfectly fine if you can earn it all in the game, but once you start saying "you can only buy it here" then it breaks the world feeling in game. I mean build a MT model into the world like you go to a black market dealer or a smuggler profession in SWG that buys them and smuggles them into the game. Don't frigging start breaking the illusion for people by doing what SOE have done with TCG and putting all the best content in them and you have to buy them....
The sad thing is I still agree with this post I've been waiting 14 years since and still there hasn't been a mmorpg that has even interested me. Only now I've pretty much stopped gaming altogether as I feel like nothing is being made for me, it's all made for the young generation that want cash shops and not games.
Complete opinion and can't be debated since people won't be persuaded with things like this. No good songs after the 90s, hip hop terrible music pork is the best meat..... meaningless
lol sounds like someone who is stuck in the past and living in nostalgia if you cant have fun and enjoy new mmos these days
If they didn't all suck we might be happy. I would be playing SWG still if it wasn't axed for the mess that is SWTOR. Those of us that have played games for more than 5 mins have watched the industry die a slow death. You can't keep turning out garbage forever and expect people to like it. It's honestly long over due that we start speaking with our wallets.
lol sounds like someone who is stuck in the past and living in nostalgia if you cant have fun and enjoy new mmos these days
Some people have a narrow range of what they enjoy and if nothing new fits within that there is nothing for them to move forward to. There is not much sense in playing a new MMORPG if to that person it is neither fun or enjoyable.
Perhaps when Monsters & Memories comes out it will provide a refuge for some of those lamenting here.
Comments
Before WoW came along, that "small minority" was enough to make companies and people rich. EverQuest had what, 600,000 subscribers? Dark Age of Camelot had 500,000? That's better than most MMOs today. And it took them less money to make, and less people. DAoC was made with THIRTY people, and it STILL has features that put modern day MMOs to shame.
Saying it's not possible, or companies can't make money aiming at the real MMORPG players, is just naive foolishness. Companies just don't want to try, because older MMOs take some design and balance skill.
I agree. Companies are just greedy. They think, why settle for a healthy 300.000 players when we can have millions? Of course, they cant really have millions because, and this is the part they hevent understood yet, is that if people want WoW, they play WoW, not whatever copy they created.
But as long as CCP is in business leading the way for other companies to brave new ground, its all good.
If you stand VERY still, and close your eyes, after a minute you can actually FEEL the universe revolving around PvP.
he's right about WoW though, the best part of the game was open world mass pvp, even if there was no rewards it was so awsome to just be running around and walk smack dab into the middle of a huge battle going on. Then blizzard chucked all that down the drain, and people like me who played the game for fun and not the elite armor quit.
Before WoW came along, that "small minority" was enough to make companies and people rich. EverQuest had what, 600,000 subscribers? Dark Age of Camelot had 500,000? That's better than most MMOs today. And it took them less money to make, and less people. DAoC was made with THIRTY people, and it STILL has features that put modern day MMOs to shame.
Saying it's not possible, or companies can't make money aiming at the real MMORPG players, is just naive foolishness. Companies just don't want to try, because older MMOs take some design and balance skill.
I agree. Companies are just greedy. They think, why settle for a healthy 300.000 players when we can have millions? Of course, they cant really have millions because, and this is the part they hevent understood yet, is that if people want WoW, they play WoW, not whatever copy they created.
But as long as CCP is in business leading the way for other companies to brave new ground, its all good.
Well CCP have said that they aim to see 600k subs by the FanFest of 2012, and that they're making design decisions on resource availability and game world scaling now based on getting a million subs. But of course there's all the difference in the world between expanding an existing game with a working economy and years of bugfixes and improvements to a million subs and hyping a million chumps into paying $49.99 to discover that your Day 1 game is barely out of Alpha testing.
Give me liberty or give me lasers
Well honestly, you could do this in EVERY MMORPG that has a PvP server. I hold the statement that WoW wasn't ever anything really special.
The last mmo worth a damn was DAoC.
Well honestly, you could do this in EVERY MMORPG that has a PvP server. I hold the statement that WoW wasn't ever anything really special.
I agree with this statement. WoW is Blizzard doing what it is best at. Taking existing concepts and ideas and making it readily available. And that is what drew in so many people to the genre. Good for the devs, more money for them, bad for us existing MMORPG fans as it redefined the genre, to the worse imo.
There is not one single innovative feature in WoW unless you see instancing as such, I sure do not, and even then I dont know if Blizzard was the first one doing instances.
And the effect WoW had on the industry is huge. AoC combat was simplified and dumbed down to better match the simple combat of WoW, WAR was redefined to be more like WoW than DAoC/Warhammer. LOTRO was redefined from being a virtual Middle Earth to be a WoW clone set in Middle Earth. Aion is a mix of WoW and Lineage 2. Star Trek Online and Champions Online took instancing and low death penalty, again which started with WoW, to the extreme.
The only game released in recent times and which does not heavily borrow from WoW is Darkfall and that game is bad for many other reasons. So really, what major MMORPG has been released after WoW which is not a linear, casual, instanced themepark?
My gaming blog
FFXI and that was in 2002. I know it is subjective but I agree that there hasn't been a quality mmo in a long time.
I just hope that one of the upcoming sandbox titles can be good enough to keep my subscritpion for a while. Back in the day sandbox as a type was a lot more popular but once WOW came out and other developers saw how much money Blizzard made then it's been like an avalanche of class / experience based games. It's sad when I can count the successful sandbox games on one hand (UO, SWG (pre-NGE), EVE online and Fallen Earth). I'm just glad we have a few sandbox games in current development and hopefully we'll get some good titles out of them.
I'm still thinking maybe Mortal Online will fix their problems and end up with a worthy title.. but if not then EarthRise also seems interesting.
Understanding that this applies differently to each individual, I agree with the thread topic. SWG(Pre-NGE) was the last game I can remember playing where I felt that I would continue playing until they brought the servers completely down. Well, the NGE in essence did that for me.
Now, the only title I'm looking forward to with kid-like enthusiasm is World of Darkness Online. Mike B just posted a video of CCP using PhysX and APEX and it is very clear that the art assets used are that of World of Darkness Online. If CCP gets 50% of the game mechanics I like in this title I'll subscribe for the duration.
I just need to start doing whatever voodoo it is that has gotten me into all the past betas. I don't see myself having any issues generating constructive feedback and posting suggestions for this one!
"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
Agree with topic.
It's sad that I've been game hopping for the past 3 years now. I can't take much more of this.
6 months ago I would have agreed with you, the last several years have bought almost most A-Tittle MMO's, the last being Aion and Champions Online, both didn't capture that MMORPG fibe for me, slightly more then 6 months ago I was in the Fallen Earth beta, but noticed like most gamers I had become spoiled in how easy this genre was becoming and the beta didn't click with me right away, mainly due to the end of it aswell being a open beta which brought the not my kind of community in game, then when the game was released I gave it another try, community definitly changed allot to me and since then am hooked with it still today. Fallen Earth has almost everything I want from a MMORPG, obviously it can become even more, but to me it beats almost any MMORPG released the last couple of years from these A-Tittle company's, which is as stated personal and has nothing to do with amount of subs or what ever but pure based on the fun I have with this game compared to the not fun I had with those A-Tittle games.
Interesting topic. I was trying to think of some nifty response for not just our developers, but all developers everywhere.
I will just say that I've been playing online games since the late 90's. I've experienced most of the North American titles that were popular in that region. It was only a few years back that I really started expanding across different styles of online gaming that appeals to different regional markets. So you could say that I've had my share of needs and wants too.
When it comes to development and deciding what a game needs, developers have to make some hard choices. It's not easy trying to plan the next big patch or update for your live game. If it was that easy, then maybe this post wouldn't exist and every player would be happy! But that's not realistic because it's damn hard to keep a game going while being attractive and positive towards their current players and future players.
Not everything goes according to plan though. There is no '5-step' easy guide to maintaining a MMO and keeping players happy. You will eventually piss people off and have to rethink about your original plans. It happens all the time, no matter the game. We're a relatively new genre that's still trying to perfect how we create and maintain our games. So there will be bumps and quality checks as we progress as a whole into better games and diverse games.
Glen ''Famine'' Swan
Senior Assistant Community Manager - Funcom
One of the biggest failures of the past couple years amongst companies has been their customer service and support. While putting an effort back into this won't make everything all better or solve everyone's issues there are a lot of companies over the past few years that could have done a lot more to alleviate players concerns to a degree and probably have lessened the fallout of subs to their games if more of an effort was put back into this area by some companies.
At least for me that has been one of the biggest failures and downfalls in a lot of newer mmos. Companies, for the most part, are completely letting this side of the equation go and it not only shows in their product but their retention rate to these games as well.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
Indeed, that's a honest opinion of course.
The big thing is that equation you mentioned. It's hard to see the entire equation looking from the outside in. Players can't see the full picture behind any developer or publisher out there. You can only see what's through more public channels or outlets like forums, press and official channels like support or portals. The developer and publisher on the other hand are looking from the inside out. For example, they know how changes or even support impacts subscriptions and time spent in game. Players on the opposite end, cannot see such statistics unless predicting.
I'm not trying to justify that all bad things (in your opinion) are really good because you can't see the big picture looking from the outside in. I'm just trying to clarify that sometimes things are not intentional or even clueless because it's not easy trying to maintain the balance. Ultimately, it comes down to a dozen of very annoying things that can sometimes makes hard choices even harder (i.e.: changes developers know you will not like but have to do it). It can even come down to a dozen of very exciting things that just turn upside down and become supper annoying or bad (i.e.: changes you hate but developers thought were good). That's mainly because both the people looking from the inside out need to correctly bridge with the people looking from the outside in (i.e.: knowing versus the unknown).
You can say that's why positions like mine even exist.
Glen ''Famine'' Swan
Senior Assistant Community Manager - Funcom
Yeah once WoW added BGs it was over..
Although I guess it was over once they went fully to the instance model of PvE.. Old WoW used to have a mix of World Spawn PVE and instanced, but they went to complete instancing
Guess the newb guilds couldn't handle competing over World Spawns? Maybe they wanted to give more welfare epics to more players. Dunno
EQ was the last decent MMORPG. Everything since then has been a kids MMORPG.
I don't believe that because most of the reasons they have ruined mmorpgs in the past were all badly taken by the community. All they had to do was admit they were wrong and not let their egos get in the way, instead the developers were stupid and decided to kill their game.
Planetside got some stupid expansion that was three months in development and it was just crap. They released it to test servers two weeks before launch, which was the only testing it got and noone liked it. Instead of scraping it and working on what the players actually wanted, they pushed it and then put nothing more into the game until BFRS. Which nobody liked when they were on test and yet they pushed it anyways. All they had to do was work on new base designs and tech updates, which is what the community wanted. By tech updates I mean better hardware so battles can keep on growing and better graphics like what EVE does, so it feels fresh as FPS is all about the graphics. Instead they just let the game die cause SOE had no clue and speaking to some developers they said most of their budget got butchered to feed EQ2 and SWG.
With Star Wars Galaxies again we have the same problem of publishes being pushed even though everyone hated them. They pushed things that clearly broke the game and ruined a sense of immersion like reducing starport times or adding quick travel with JTLS or TEF. They pushed them two crap expansions along with the CU and the NGE which nobody wanted. I mean they were all on test and EVERYONE hated them and especially the NGE, it was buggy as hell and broke the whole game. It didn't improve the game and it didn't make it any easier for new players. What woulda made things easier is a proper tutorial, but they still couldn't do that with the NGE, it teaches you nothing about the game. People were leaving that game because it had no content, not because the profession system was too complex, because it wasn't.
EQ died because they got greedy and decided to release and expansion every year and then two every year. That Luclin and PoP expansions were buggy as hell and killed what many people loved about EQ.
Even your game Age of Conan... I fail to see how noone in that development looked at it and thought "this game is bad" as you were developing it. I mean people like seamless worlds and WoW has a seamless world. Yet Age of Conan has a loading screen every 30 seconds and feels more like a single player game. How did noone pick up on that in design?
I just think the people in charge have no clue of how you should run a persistent world. CCP have gotten it right so far and while I don't like the UI and how they've ignored problems for years, that doesn't mean they haven't run that game amazingly well. They've never made game breaking changes to the world and they've always asked the community and kept things balanced. They would never release instant travel that breaks the feeling of the size of the galaxy in that game.
I just don't get how they can't see this and I don't get how they can't introduce MT properly. MT is perfectly fine if you can earn it all in the game, but once you start saying "you can only buy it here" then it breaks the world feeling in game. I mean build a MT model into the world like you go to a black market dealer or a smuggler profession in SWG that buys them and smuggles them into the game. Don't frigging start breaking the illusion for people by doing what SOE have done with TCG and putting all the best content in them and you have to buy them....
there has never been a great MMO...only fun ones...the ones before 2004 were not even fun.
when I think 2004 I think SWG everything else was moot.
Some people have a narrow range of what they enjoy and if nothing new fits within that there is nothing for them to move forward to. There is not much sense in playing a new MMORPG if to that person it is neither fun or enjoyable.
Perhaps when Monsters & Memories comes out it will provide a refuge for some of those lamenting here.