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Casual killed the MMO game
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It didn't kill the industry nor does it keep it alive. It tainted it. Its like having a person eat good food for 10 years and then deciding to feed it processed foods. The person is still alive, but the quality of the persons insides are crappy.
People don't like it when MMO vet complain, but we can't stand it when those that have played WoW as their first mmo think they know everything. Back about 7 or 8 years ago, MMOs used to be a fun a experience. It was gamers playing games. Now that we have all these "normal" or "casual" people on the internet and online games, everything had to be drastically dumbed down. Its no longer "gamers" or "geeks" or whatever, its regular people, and regular people are usually slow when it comes computers in general, but thats to things like myspace, facebook, and WoW the net is flooded with these people, some of which think they are gamers because they played WoW or think they are a "computer person" because they are on facebook all day.
Hopefully there will be some games out there that aren't dumbed down for these people. Although, as you said before, thanks to developers stupifying their games, actually gamers were dragged down with them. So when a challenging MMO comes along, or any game, a lot of people simply wont bother.
Games dont need to take forever to progress or anything, they just need to not hold your hand like they do now.
One thing is missing from todays MMO's and that is exploration! I used to explore quite a lot and the road really took me 30 minutes, not because you had to push the button forward, but I was distracted by many elements... I saw a nice house in the distance and wanted to check it out or I scrolled over the lore of the game...
These games however do not appeal to me with the lore, quests... you get everything on a silver platter and you do not have to think about anything. You get rewarded for each "mission" which any trained monkey could do and you feel happy because you got another uber gear. All the gameplay turned from the experience value(stories, RP elements, be diversified in the community) to the material values(items, level ups, boasting before friends, all people are common in the end).
It does somehow elude people in the thought that they play less as you get faster fun, faster gameplay, faster rewards and quests... but in the end you have a hell a lot of quests and quite a mountain of weapons to get. So in the end players play more than used to.
Dunno... maybe I am thinking too much... sorry for bad English.
Regards
Fully agree to this post. Maybe Mortal online could bring some elements to the genre, but with the problems the game has at the moment... well we will see.
Well, I don't know, sometimes I like "regular people" over gamers and geeks. And somtimes I don't.
And given your example, what about people who didn't enjoy how early games were but then got later games and then they could play?
So, to them it's like trying crap for years and then they could finally eat what they considered good food?
You can't argue subjective viewpoints. I do feel that I miss the sense of exploration as was mentioined but I'm on the fence about the hardcore stuff.
I liked that it took me a long time in Lineage 2 to get to high level. I like that you had to get an alliance in order to take down the huge bosses you needed for progression.
but I also hated it.
My girl friend is looking over my shoulder and mentions that there are people who are resentful of people running marathons for charity but doing it casual as opposed to meeting the hardcore standards that marathons used to have.
As a non-gamer she sees the argument for having specific games for hardcore and specific games for casual.
So, why don't devs make hardcore games? Especially when hardcore gamers keep saying "if they make it well it will do well".
I realize that companies want to go after the "WoW dollars" but there has to be more to it than that. Heck, look at Darkfall and Mortal Online.
Both made to be more hardcore and both had issues. And even after they struggled there were still issues. And that's the thing. Gamers are so jaded and expect so much that I highly doubt anyone could hope to break even if they didn't try to make a game that appealed to the masses.
It's so easy for us to just not log in if we don't like a game. But for a small company hopign to make it, it's their livelyhood.
So I sort of forgive game companies for not making hardcore 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
I definately think its immersion thats missing, but i don't think that necessarily its a hardcore vs. casual arguement. EQ was incredibly immersive but I think it was due to depth more then anything and that is what I think the newer MMOs are severly lacking. Contrary to what many might say, EQ catered to a wide array of playstyles from the casual to the hardcore. In EQ you could solo, group, pick up raid or hardcore raid very easily depending on what you were feeling at the time.
One of the things I think about is how they were able to build depth into EQ that was pretty amazing. The terrain was very diverse from underwater zones to mountains to up in the air. I haven't seen an underwater zone in a newer MMO (never played WoW so can't comment on that).
Another missing piece of depth is religion. As a high elf wizard worshiping Sol Ro, Tunare in Plane of Growth hated me. If I had picked a different god then I would have been fine. I haven't seen a newer MMO have a religion that mattered.
How about the human shadowknight that was KOS in 'good' towns? because of his class he had to wait outside of town or sneak in to use the bank (banking while Fd) but he was welcome places that I wasn't. This is missing in newer MMOs, theres just towns that the NPCs like you or hate you.
Faction is missing. I remember 'for something to do' I would turn stacks of bone chips in to raise faction in Cabellas (I think that was the name) and eventually I was no longer KOS there and I could even start to get quests there. What happened to factions in newer MMOs?
Crafting in most MMOs is so shallow its not even worth mentioning. Lotro was very shallow and everyone could be a master 'x' in a matter of hours. I think there was 3 or 4 grandmaster tailors on Quellious (EQ server) when PoP (5th expansion) came out. I do really like the material system in MO as an exception to the shallow crafting in modern MMOs.
In depth quests such as epics or the velious prayer shawl quest are missing from newer MMOs replaced by 'kill 10 boars' quests. Remember when in town there was a massive group of players following around those who had their epics and lining up to take a look at the sparkles? Now it seems to be written that everyone must have thier epic within 6 weeks.
Very rare spawn that sometimes were just thought of to be myths. I remember websites dedicated to rare sightings/spawns and everyones theory of how to get them to spawn.
Now these are just a few examples of what I felt brought depth and immersion to EQ and this is programming/database stuff not graphics so why have these been neglected and not actually made even more deep due to incredibly higher power of newer computers? Too much work or not enough creative thinking/ability?
- just my ramblings
Palazious <The Vindicators> Darkfall
Palazious r40, rr45 SW War
Palazious 50 Pirate PoTBS
Palazious 35 Sorcerer Vanguard
Palazious 75 wizard EQ
Paladori 50 Champion LOTRO
Poppa Reaver bugged at rank15
I see what everyone says, and yes the gaming industry are looking at the masses and looking for the $ signs. Which I think is kinda crazy, I say if you dont have a strong community no matter what game you play then you wont have a game for very long. Take Fiesta for example, a lot of players are starting to complain that all Outspark is looking for is money. But I have it on good terms that; that is all going to change soon. ( rather sooner than later)
But back to the topic at hand, there is going to be gamers out there that want the hardcore type of games that gives them a sense of challenge and wonder. Also the casual gamer will get in there and whine " omg this is so hard", but they are there for the quick rewards not for the personal ones you can get for just exploring the territory.
Kristina Linger
AkashaGunn lvl 92 Cleric
Epith server
I agree with a lot of this.
A game doesnt have to be near impossible, doesnt need harsh death penalties nor does it need to take 'X real world hours to travel from A to B'
As you stated its all about depth and the little things that make a game deep. Newer MMOs like WoW have tons of content and quests with some really good story, but the game lacks the depth older games had.
And the thing is, depth isnt about being hardcore or casual. So I dont know why stuff like this is overlooked when it comes to modern MMO design. I mean I can see in games like WoW where the devs wanted you to follow a pretty straight forward storyline from the start of the game to the end of the game which might have lead to the lack of depth, but they could have easily added these things and left it for the players who didnt want to follow the predetermined path.
Just adding depth back to the games would go a long way toward bringing the genre back to MMORPG instead of what feels more like MMOXBL.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
First of all, your saying the most successful mmorpg of all time, World of Warcraft, killed the mmo genre. If anytrhing it brought millions of more people into MMORPG's. That's like saying Microsoft killed the computer software market. All it did was make it more accessible to a wider audience of people. A new generation of MMOs is here and you need to learn to accept it. Everything changes man.....
Pepsi1028
PEPSI!!!!!
Get out of your box already...
I started playing MMO's the day DAoC released. Do not know if that makes me an old MMO gamer or not but I will give my opinion.
I do miss certain parts of the older MMO games for sure. What I dont miss are the timesinks.
Half of what people label a " challenge" is nothing more than a designed timesink to keep you online, subbed and slow down your character development. If you want to walk 30 minutes to the next town just to explore then go for it, being forced to do it is another thing.
I like death penalty, I like challenging PvP and PvE encounters, I dont mind somewhat long travel times either. But it seems to me that a game can do all these things without calling a 30 minute hike to the next town content.
But then again I am probably just getting old o.0
Frankly I never felt that 'immersed' in the 'old school' MMOs. The artificial grinds and timesinks just felt way too fake to immerse me in the game.
On the other hand I can play WoW for hours and get really immersed in the game. I value immersion highly so I really have a hard time understanding why people would want to kill it by going to the 'way things used to be'.
In fact I am kinda tired of people prefering to be 'social' and breaking immersion by talking about fluff rather than doing waht they are supposed to.
Yeah I agree with you here...
I consider myself casual because I don't like timesinks, so far that seems to be the big 'thing' that you have to live by in order to be 'hardcore'. I mean you can put games like Doom or something of the sort on nightmare mode and it would be considered hardcore, yet it doesn't have timesinks and you can play it on and off all you want and still be hardcore.
I played FFXI for 6 years, it is the most hardcore and timesinked game I have ever played and I will not play something that takes that much time again. I'm all for challenge but not timesinks, so I guess i'm a casual.
As an MMO vet, I agree with the first part of your post here about older MMO's being more time consuming. Sadly, today's world is all about now now now, so everything else also moves in that direction and at that pace as well. But to me, the MMORPG genre was not meant for that. Being time consuming is what separated MMO's from console gaming and is why it had a small niche community...which was fine by me, and by many others who played them I am sure. They were meant to be like interactive table top games...adventures/epic journey's in an open world where you could get away from the everyday drudges of life and get lost in another world. Be what you wanted and do what you wanted to do. Yes, for nerds like me and others lol.
However, I can't agree that they weren't more challenging....to a degree. Sure, more time doesn't equal more challenge, but... it was more challenging to me to GET to the level cap, because the quests took you across continents to complete, had rich storylines you could get into, etc. Some zones were tough to navigate because of actual danger involved with them, like Kithicor forest in EQ, where at night the woods were a whole other beast..full of powerful undead that made you actually fear travel through it. And places that were void of air where you had to pay attention to your buffs to counter it while fighting, etc. Not to mention...crazy as it sounds...it was FUN and took a good knowledge of the zones to know where to fight AND avoid death trains coming through caused by less experienced players, etc. Dying sucked because you would have to go back to your corpse and loot your items before continuing...and you had to do it naked! It took patience, again, a good knowledge of the surroundings and mobs and sometimes even skill to pull it off..which in turn to me, made it fun and gratifying when you could pull it off. Of course yes, at times it could also be frustrating, but this is what made you THINK about your actions and become better to avoid such situations.
Now a days, quests give you in-game GPS to find everything, and are mere feet away from the quest giver, or have teleports to and from areas so fast, what about them really makes them quests? IMO, 95% of quests are "Kill/Collect" X amount quests with crappy reasons given for doing them. Player's can mow through multiple mobs with ease so it keeps these instant gratification players playing them so they can feel "god-like", I just don't see what makes them as challenging or more challenging than the older games. Not that all newer MMO's are like that, their are a few exceptions...such as I felt AoC was pretty challenging (I think the game should of been called Age of Aggro personally), EVE Online, etc. But most? Paint by numbers games shrouded in an MMO wrapper.
And to your last part, I guess if newer players also showed some wisdom and clarity instead of the same you accuse us of, as well as do away with the obvious selfishness...considering their are a billion MMO's to cater to casuals already, maybe we could stop the unecessary BS bickering. Older players are just frustrated to see the things that once made MMO's great to them disappear all together in place of, basically, glorified PC console games. Why can some not vent and/or express their opinions without being crucified for it?
I just don't get it. Why pay $50- $60 for a game, then $15 a month for it, just to get to level cap in a month or less because developer's think end-game is what MMO's should be about? It boggles my mind people pay $15 a month after capping just to sit around and complain about a lack of content. MMORPG's, once upon a time, were about the journey, NOT the destination...and the unification of the communities within them to accomplish those journey's in an eventual stride towards endcap. Which most didn't even care about reaching as much because the content kept them busy and entralled.
This is also why it makes me laugh when players say they don't have 5 hours to devote to raids, etc. Isn't this why there are console games?
Eh, wasting my time...
I am a casual player. At no time in my MMO playing history have I been able to devote 5 hours a day to gaming - more on weekends. Sure sometimes I would be on for 6 hour stints but generally in smaller chunks and not everyday (family, work, etc, etc).
I want challenge in games. I want games to be immersive. I want huge worlds to explore.
I don't want gear gifted to me the instant I log in. I don't want everything to be easy and to complete it on one day. But I also don't want my time to be wasted by things such as simple travel between towns, mass clicking to micro manage a task the game should really do for me (yeah like everyone would be happy going back to using sliderules too).
It is NOT casual players who have changed MMOs. It is lazy, spoiled people. It just happens that there is a large amount of overlap between casuals and lazies.
Removal of time-wasting activities and removal of challenge are two separate phenomenon in MMOs. It does seem however that designers seem to think they are the same thing - as do a lot of the "old-school" MMO players. But designers are in a catch-22. If they add challenge there are cries of "now it's just a time-sink" by the lazy bastards who aren't willing to recognise that they aren't the gaming GODs they thought they were and some things might actually need to be thought about.
You can't do anything about casuals - they are casual because life has placed other, more important, demands on their time. You can however do something about the lazy, spoiled, instant-gratification crowd. They can be educated. We just have to hope that time will do this, because no one, whether it be MMO designers or society in general, is going to step up to the plate.
Yes, it brought in millions of players...but it brought them from console gaming that, in essence, wants MMO's to become like their console games. It brought in TONS of FPS toolbags hellbent on showing how 1337 they are. I rather it had stayed at the pace it was at where communities were less rabid and whiney. THAT is the main reason most modern MMO's fail. Developer's listen to the whiney majority, dumbing their games down...and then players get to end cap quickly and whine they don't have enough content. So developer's throw soem random garbage out there to appease them, and they whine the new content sucks. Vicious circle.
I couldnt' agree with you more. I think it's sort of "wrong" for people to come into a game that is different and demand it to be "WoW 2".
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
Why wouldn't developers listen to the majority of their players? Like i said, all they want is the $$$$
Pepsi1028
PEPSI!!!!!
Get out of your box already...
All those hardcore gamers from 10 years ago who helped create this genre in the first place became casual because life happened. You know, careers and families. Big surprise. If you are lucky it will happen to you too.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Yes, which is the second part of why MMO's suck now. Money trumps innovation and depth. Older MMO's still made profit without sacrificing those things, same could be done now, but since most players now are impatient and selfish.....
There was once a time when games were created for the player... You won't see that unless it is indie or someone who does not need the money...
Nice generalization, but hate to disappoint you. I have a full-time job, I have a GF (divorced), I have a 13 yr. old daughter, I have friends in which I go out with, I have school.....but I STILL like to play MMO's (Well, did. Not playing any right now because I can get the same thing most display now from console games. Instant gratification for much less cash put in). That is why MMO's had monthly fees...because they had depth and a richness that made you forget about the huge amounts of time you put in, which made them worth paying a monthly fee. The MMO's now are not worth that fee because you can blow through it with little effort and sit and pay as you wait for more content, or move on to another MMO where you rinse and repeat.
I think you misunderstood me. Ah well. No big deal.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Ah...I gotcha now. Kinda jumped the gun there. My bad hah. But I think some might still get my point....maybe.
But the question is are you still investing 10+ hours a day with a full time job? a GF, daugther and friends? if not how is this a generalisation? you certainly do not fall in that hardcore no lifer category.
You can't blame the game for lack of immersion. You can't blame the developers or publishers either. It's the players that shape a game; they are the ones that make or break immersion.
All developers now make games for a specific audience. Why that audience? Because it's profitable. Why is it profitable? Because the majority of people enjoy that type of game.
You can't say that the industry sucks just because it's not what it used to be. If it makes more money now, it does NOT suck. In fact, it's BETTER than it was before, simply because it makes more money. More money implies more subs. More subs means more people like it. This point has been stressed so many times before-just because you and your group of 'old school hardcore vets' don't like something doesn't mean it sucks. Casual is in. Hardcore is out. Don't like it? To put it in the terms of the 'hardcore' players: Suck it up or leave, carebear.
Seriously, you people need to stop complaining about developers not catering to your needs. You're in the minority. If you weren't, they'd be making games for you instead of the casuals. The opinions of the people longing for the 'good old days' simply don't matter because there aren't 11.5 million of you.
If someone would look past simply making gazillions and develop an MMORPG with some innovation, depth, great storylines, and some passion again I would be hardcore into it again, but none now are even remotely worth it. Even with my current schedule I would dedicate 4 or 5 hours a night if I could. Hardcore is defined by the player in question...playing 10+ hours a night isn't a requirement for it to hold true.