EQ would have been WoW with a group focus if McQuaid had more time, money, and anyone actually had a clue about what they were doing. EQ was a very unfinished game that had not had the rails added onto it yet. The Vision was also good times. Thou shalt suffer and play as the Lord sees fit else the Lord shall smite thee with artifical mechanics.
...artificial mechanics? So instances, invisible walls, magical global markets that teleport goods, battlegrounds that never actually change hands or impact the game, none of those are artificial mechanics?
Did I claim they were not? McQuaid had his Vision about the way the game should be played and tried very hard to ensure everyone played with his toy his way.
If you read up on the gaming history of the late '70s/start '80s, you will see that history is repeating itself. Due to crappy games back then, the consoles almost destroyed themselves as platform, because noone wanted the consoles when the games were that bad.
The platform (PC) will not be destroyed by the failure of the MMORPG, but the genre will - temporarily.
From the ashes, hopefully the games, that will fulfill this genre's potential, will rise.
What is the single reason that there are so many wow clone theme park games out there? The answer is : Because people play them.
When us older farts (I'm only 35 hehe) first sat down to play mmos in the early days it wasn't to play some mouse on a wheel spinning after gear crap. For many of us, including the developers, it was the pnp Dungeons and Dragons finally actualized. Sure the UI was clunky but there was some aspect of it that made you feel like you were part of the environment. Most new developers probably haven't even seen a D20
Gear was part of it indeed. I had one silver broadsword in UO for a long time. One. I protected that thing until I lost it at the bottom of dungeon Deceit. I got pk'd down there. He cast wall of stone on me while I was fighting a lich lord. Thats right: I lost something in the game world and I still remember "where" and "when" in the game world it happend. That memory stayed with me because it represented the loss of something gained. UO remains the only game world where I traded a house I owned for a wooden chair because it was broken and therefore "rare".
In the beginning I thought the sky was going to be the limit. The worlds that would come. The cool things that they'd do. Hey game devs: where is Recall V2.0 and Gatetravel? Where is treasure hunting? Anyone with 1 year experience could spawn a map, a shovel and a chest spawn point. Where is sailing like in UO and housing and everythign else? I'll tell you where 10 ++ years in the past and its your fault for subscribing to this stuff Please cite the page in the wow book of all things where it says rare items or unique items must not spawn.
Now its all this free to play nonsense which wouldn't be a scam if it didn't FEEL like a scam and if they werent trying to hide the fact you don't get something for nothing.
In my mind MMOs were never going to be cooperative single player RPG games. They were meant to be game worlds with an ecosystem made up of various parts but primarily influenced by the players. Sandbox means: here is a bucket of toys, go play with them.
What the hell has happened to this industry? Its gone completely fubar. All I can say is thank god for Eve Online. The one place where I still clearly remember when and where I loose stuff. The one place where I feel the player has the upper hand in how to participate in content and the one place that promises to give me a good ass kicking for my missteps. In Eve sometimes there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
The best thing that can happen to this industry is for there to be a seperation in ideology. I dont want to be called a mmorpg gamer anymore and any game that offers fedx and kill as its primary entertainment can go. I believe its time for a new paradigm that seperates those that understand the properties of what goes into making good virtual worlds and those that think that World of Warcraft is the Rosetta Stone of online interactive game play.
I dont really mean to offend people who enjoy theme park games. It is a style, and its a valid one but it represents a level of creative indulgence I've experience already. I find that sandbox , free to roam worlds offer the most intresting experiences because by nature human behaviour is unpredictable whereas games on rails always have predictable outcomes.
The last 10 years of gaming has been spent developing hatred for what the genre has become. You can say how innovative the graphics engines have become but if you boil game play down it hasn't changed. The level wheel has been perfected to be the perfect result of scripted programming instead of the otherway around.
EQ would have been WoW with a group focus if McQuaid had more time, money, and anyone actually had a clue about what they were doing. EQ was a very unfinished game that had not had the rails added onto it yet. The Vision was also good times. Thou shalt suffer and play as the Lord sees fit else the Lord shall smite thee with artifical mechanics.
...artificial mechanics? So instances, invisible walls, magical global markets that teleport goods, battlegrounds that never actually change hands or impact the game, none of those are artificial mechanics?
Did I claim they were not? McQuaid had his Vision about the way the game should be played and tried very hard to ensure everyone played with his toy his way.
That's something that we call... game design.
This is about artifical mechanics, which I can only assume means things that cause one to suspend their supsension of disbelief.
Yep. Lets add summoning there is nothing more artificial then every single thing being able to teleport players to them. Lets make everything above a certain level immune to CC spells just for giggles. And on, and on with the artifical limitations to combat to a system designed by the glorious McQuaid. These artifical mechanics and contstraints were all added because McQuaid screwed up when creating his diverse skill set for combat and that allowed people to work outside of his box.
Now, I go back to my original argument. EQ, the golden oldie that so many herald as the way, would have been WoW if McQuaid had more time, money, and people to pull off his vision. The only difference would have been a group focus.
Forever looking for employment. Life is rather dull without it.
I couldn't agree more. I think it boils down to the fact that sandbox style games take much more monitoring and proactive administrators. A themepark style game can just be set up and is for the most part hands off. Not to mention WoW hit a gold mine and everyone else wants a piece of the pie. In time sandbox will emerge again and those that didn't know what they were missing will understand posts like this one.
There are sandbox MMOs out there and people play them. Of course, they may be populated by 2 or 3 players, and a barren world to explore. Cheers.
That's odd, because the one that I've been playing for many years has well over 300,000 players and that number only grows with time. Cheers rejected, find another glass to clink.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
Will take about 1 month of a true sandbox with no theme park attractions before everyone fled to the newest themepark release.
The OP doesnt get it, people dont want a game that lacks theme park activites and doesnt have a set goal or objective.
Successful sand box no-themepark games: 0
Successful theme park heavy games : take your pick
I really want someone to just do it, make a damn uber sandbox so it can be proven that it wont hold an audience larger than vanguard's current.
Problem with these games is the more sandboxy and less them-parky you get, the less chance that you can log in for an hour or two and accomplish anything. Most people DONT have 14 hours a day to play, most players like logging in a few hours, doing a raid or a few pvp mini games or whatever.
Will take about 1 month of a true sandbox with no theme park attractions before everyone fled to the newest themepark release.
The OP doesnt get it, people dont want a game that lacks theme park activites and doesnt have a set goal or objective.
Successful sand box no-themepark games: 0
Ultima Online
Star Wars Galaxies
Darkfall
Eve Online
Successful theme park heavy games : take your pick
WoW
I really want someone to just do it, make a damn uber sandbox so it can be proven that it wont hold an audience larger than vanguard's current.
Vanguards population has nothing to do with gameplay. Besides, Vanguard is hardly sandbox, its just open world. Vanguard doesn't have population because it isn't supported by SoE.
Will take about 1 month of a true sandbox with no theme park attractions before everyone fled to the newest themepark release.
The OP doesnt get it, people dont want a game that lacks theme park activites and doesnt have a set goal or objective.
Successful sand box no-themepark games: 0
Ultima Online
Star Wars Galaxies
Darkfall
Eve Online
Successful theme park heavy games : take your pick
WoW
I really want someone to just do it, make a damn uber sandbox so it can be proven that it wont hold an audience larger than vanguard's current.
Vanguards population has nothing to do with gameplay. Besides, Vanguard is hardly sandbox, its just open world. Vanguard doesn't have population because it isn't supported by SoE.
Wrong
The point was, everyone has their own definition of what a sandbox is....you chose games that are ancient or dead, eve excluded. I would hardly call darkfall a success and SWG....not even close.
And for successful themepark games you chose the most successful.
I know i know everyone hates wow, its why its so damn popular right? (no i dont play)
And i only used vangurad as a population reference not a sandbox reference.
Also i might add that eve isnt really a sandbox
The point im trying to make is that the market has chosen one type of game over another. Keep telling everyone they are wrong...mabey youll get your real sandbox some day.
The point was, everyone has their own definition of what a sandbox is
Then the point is nonsense because there is an actual definition for the term sandbox game.
"A sandbox-style video game is a video game with an open-ended and non-linear style of gameplay, (or can be a mode of a game that is more often played in a goal-directed manner). Linearity denotes that the objectives of the game must be completed in a fixed sequence,. Non-linearity means that the player has a selection of options including:
The user is allowed to play forever, and the game is generally designed with this in mind rather than the completion of particular goals or levels in order to reach a grand finale.
The player can choose his or her own path in the game, either with no consequences or with consequences that can later be undone."
Where did you get that? not calling BS or anything, it sounds like a really good definition for Sandbox.
Will take about 1 month of a true sandbox with no theme park attractions before everyone fled to the newest themepark release.
The OP doesnt get it, people dont want a game that lacks theme park activites and doesnt have a set goal or objective.
Successful sand box no-themepark games: 0
Ultima Online
Star Wars Galaxies
Darkfall
Eve Online
Successful theme park heavy games : take your pick
WoW
I really want someone to just do it, make a damn uber sandbox so it can be proven that it wont hold an audience larger than vanguard's current.
Vanguards population has nothing to do with gameplay. Besides, Vanguard is hardly sandbox, its just open world. Vanguard doesn't have population because it isn't supported by SoE.
Wrong
The point was, everyone has their own definition of what a sandbox is....
you chose games that are ancient or dead Uhh, and how is that relavant at all? You claimed that there were no successful sandbox games, I gave you 4.
I would hardly call darkfall a success I would call opening a second server, hiring new developers, moving into a larger building, releasing their third expansion, building a motion capture studio, and getting their game in stores around the world a success, wouldn't you?
and SWG....not even close. SWG was the second most popular MMORPG at its time. It only started losing subscribers when it got changed into a theme park game. Kind of proves you wrong twice over
And for successful themepark games you chose the most successful.
I chose the only real successful one in the last 4 years. WAR themepark bombed. Age of Conan themepark bombed. STO themepark bombed. Aion collapsed in the west.
I know i know everyone hates wow, its why its so damn popular right? I don't hate WoW because its popular. I hate WoW because it didn't do anything new for the industry at all, but is heralded as the pinnacle of MMORPG gameplay.
Also i might add that eve isnt really a sandbox
If Eve isn't a sandbox, nothing is.
The point im trying to make is that the market has chosen one type of game over another. So I guess people should just stop trying to make good movies like Lord of the Rings and stick to making stuff like Transformers 2? Far less effort goes into one. And I guess we should just all be content to watch our favorite game genre get warped and twisted into something else and be happy about it.
The point was, everyone has their own definition of what a sandbox is
Then the point is nonsense because there is an actual definition for the term sandbox game.
"A sandbox-style video game is a video game with an open-ended and non-linear style of gameplay, (or can be a mode of a game that is more often played in a goal-directed manner). Linearity denotes that the objectives of the game must be completed in a fixed sequence,. Non-linearity means that the player has a selection of options including:
The user is allowed to play forever, and the game is generally designed with this in mind rather than the completion of particular goals or levels in order to reach a grand finale.
The player can choose his or her own path in the game, either with no consequences or with consequences that can later be undone."
So you put quotes around it and *poof* it becomes the definition?
Funny thing is, with that definition, the only sandbox i see is FreeRealms, which is nothing more than other players making their own themeparks.
Its all a false argument foisted on us by inept dev teams.
MMO's dont have to be sandbox or themepark,they can be both.Its just the dev teams suck so bad they cant even handle making one of the types decently,let alone having the brains and skill to combine them.
An MMO should have areas where civilization is in charge, and these areas should be themepark oriented.In addition an MMO should also have fringes,areas where there is little to no civilization and the player can choose to operate there,experiencing a sandbox setting.
The two areas should interact and affect each other.For instance, a leader in a civilized theme park section should sponsor players to go into the fringes sandbox area and try an establish settlements in his name etc...,that the player would run for him til the player gained independence or acquired higher rank than the leader.
And the sandox fringes area,should have factions that have goods and make deals that the civiliazed themepark section requires.And areas to really explore with things of real worth to be found.
AND BOTH should be able to change into the other.Perhaps a themepark civilization areas mines dry up,making the population move from it turning it into a fringe sandbox area.OR perhaps a new mine or civilization center gets founded in a fringe sandbox area,bringing with it population and interest groups that make the fringe area a civilization area.
The mmo worlds should have areas no player can even reach by the end of the first year of its play.And lots of new places and things to discover.And expansions should bring with them new areas,that can again take large amounts of realtime to even reach,let alone fully explore.
Instead we get incredibly crappy unfinished light versions that cant even accomplish one setting type adequately.Its the complete failure on the dev teams part that creates these false arguments.They dont have the skill or work ethic to do something, so we end up thinking we have to make a bad choice......which we really shouldnt have to make.
I've played these supposed "sandbox" games... UO, EVE, SWG, DF... and to be honest, I really can't find just what's so great about them.
The only one that I played more than a year was SWG, while it was a pretty fun game at times, (Mainly the PvP) The main activity was grinding missions... the game has also been pretty imbalanced/broken throughout it's entire career.
I can't say that I've had any more fun in the sandbox games than any themepark game.
I'm curious to know why so many people regard sandbox games as the holy grail of gaming. What is it? Skill progression? FFA PvP? Diversity?
From what I've found, class based games are more diverse than any skill progression game.
While I can see it's nice to be able to wonder off in any direction and experience the game as you see fit, it also makes it harder to balance the game.
If you wanted to you could take pretty much any themepark game there is and run off from the starting area if you wanted to.
Personally I really don't care if a game is labeled sandbox, or themepark, if it's fun, I'll play it.
List your reasons why sandbox is so much greater than themepark.
So you mean to tell me that after all these years, I've been nothing but a Themeparker? I shoulda just stuck it out with my old '04 Tauren hunter, I woulda been the king of Azeroth by now
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
I might just be shooting into the wind, but perhaps developers should just make an entertaining game instead of sticking labels on it?
Just a sincere thought.
What do you guys think?
Labels in theory would help us describe a game, like:
This game is Sandbox.
Instead of:
This is a game where a player's actions even small ones can affect all others players, and all actions together create a living and breathing virtual world. (That's only my definition)
As you can see, the first shorter and thus easier to do some marketing with it.
The problem is that no one agree about some of this concepts, like sandbox or FFA PvP or F2P.
And this make them pretty much useless, and it is even more useless to discuss if them fit in a game or not, because they don't mean anything.
@Garvon3: You seem to have different definitions of success for sandbox and themepark games. You can take any P2P themepark released within the last 10 years and they have been as successful as the sandbox games you listed, if not more.
List your reasons why sandbox is so much greater than themepark.
Theme park style games encourage a certain style of gameplay. Specifically, games like WoW encourage lots of solo quest grinding and discourage community. They feel more like games and less like virtual worlds.
And that's fine, really. There might even be a bigger audience for it. But I think there's also a big, untapped audience that would jump all over a well-made sandbox MMO.
I wrote about some of this here if you're interested.
List your reasons why sandbox is so much greater than themepark.
Theme park style games encourage a certain style of gameplay. Specifically, games like WoW encourage lots of solo quest grinding and discourage community. They feel more like games and less like virtual worlds.
And that's fine, really. There might even be a bigger audience for it. But I think there's also a big, untapped audience that would jump all over a well-made sandbox MMO.
I wrote about some of this here if you're interested.
Agreed.
There's definitely a huge "something" I feel I'm missing when I play WoW.
I've never had the chance to really play a sandbox title, but I hope I get to in the future.
I'm looking at The Secret World, as that seems to be a sandboxy type of game.
List your reasons why sandbox is so much greater than themepark.
Theme park style games encourage a certain style of gameplay. Specifically, games like WoW encourage lots of solo quest grinding and discourage community. They feel more like games and less like virtual worlds.
And that's fine, really. There might even be a bigger audience for it. But I think there's also a big, untapped audience that would jump all over a well-made sandbox MMO.
I wrote about some of this here if you're interested.
The fact if a game is themepark or sandbox style says nothing about if its group or solo oriented play.
In a themepark MMO, its the quests that determine if its mainly solo or group oriented. This is different from game to game. You cant generally say that themepark MMO's cater to solo gameplay. It might be the case with current most popular themepark MMO's, but thats not because its a themepark MMO.
In the case of sandbox, well I think its best if we forget about the sandbox word. Its like the word grind, everyone gives their own meaning to that word. There is nothing more annoying then a thread about sandbox MMO's where every poster is talking about something different.
Theme park style games encourage a certain style of gameplay. Specifically, games like WoW encourage lots of solo quest grinding and discourage community. They feel more like games and less like virtual worlds.
And that's fine, really. There might even be a bigger audience for it. But I think there's also a big, untapped audience that would jump all over a well-made sandbox MMO.
I wrote about some of this here if you're interested.
Nice link there, I read the blog
About that 'first MMO experience' and that initial sense of wonder, I commented upon it in another post:
'I think the times were different back then and also the communities were somewhat different, too. Like with UO and Everquest, we were all exploring the new gaming genre, awed by the fact of a virtual world, and very openminded towards grouping. Of course many will look at the features of that time and think 'if a MMO had that then maybe it would give the same feeling back I had when I played that 1st MMO'.
The same applies to people for who WoW is their 1st MMO, they also look at other MMO's and compare them with how they experienced WoW when it was vanilla.
Your 1st MMO that you enjoy is in many ways like your 1st true love; it makes such a deep impression that you'll always initially compare other partners with that 1st one. And of course you'll notice differences. That your next partner isn't the same as your first doesn't mean though that the love can't be just as intense, it'll just be different.
The same applies to MMO's: wanting other MMO's to be the same as your 1st MMO in the hope that it'll give you the initial bliss and sense of wonder back when you first made your entrance in the world of MMO's, that's ultimately a dead end road.
The genre evolves, I agree though how a game is set up can help or hinder a lot what traits will emerge and become prevalent in a community.'
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
List your reasons why sandbox is so much greater than themepark.
Theme park style games encourage a certain style of gameplay. Specifically, games like WoW encourage lots of solo quest grinding and discourage community. They feel more like games and less like virtual worlds.
And that's fine, really. There might even be a bigger audience for it. But I think there's also a big, untapped audience that would jump all over a well-made sandbox MMO.
I wrote about some of this here if you're interested.
The fact if a game is themepark or sandbox style says nothing about if its group or solo oriented play.
In a themepark MMO, its the quests that determine if its mainly solo or group oriented. This is different from game to game. You cant generally say that themepark MMO's cater to solo gameplay. It might be the case with current most popular themepark MMO's, but thats not because its a themepark MMO.
In the case of sandbox, well I think its best if we forget about the sandbox word. Its like the word grind, everyone gives their own meaning to that word. There is nothing more annoying then a thread about sandbox MMO's where every poster is talking about something different.
I suppose that's true. You could make an MMO where gameplay is very much on rails, but it still requires grouping. I guess that would be a group-oriented theme park game.
But the thing is, it would still feel like a game and not like a world. You would group with people, finish your common quests, and then part ways and never speak again. The very fact of always having a concrete goal discourages community and interaction. It's just the way we're wired. If we're on a job, we're less likely to stop and socialize. We turn into quest-completing robots.
And again - there's nothing wrong with that. There's a huge contingent of gamers that enjoys that type of gameplay. But there's also a huge contingent that doesn't, and would prefer something more free form. There are lots of people who don't want to follow a bunch of straight lines to reach max level, and would instead rather wander and meander and make their own way. There's just something more immersive about not always chasing after some quest object or another, and instead advancing in whatever manner you feel like.
Theme park style games encourage a certain style of gameplay. Specifically, games like WoW encourage lots of solo quest grinding and discourage community. They feel more like games and less like virtual worlds.
And that's fine, really. There might even be a bigger audience for it. But I think there's also a big, untapped audience that would jump all over a well-made sandbox MMO.
I wrote about some of this here if you're interested.
Nice link there, I read the blog
About that 'first MMO experience' and that initial sense of wonder, I commented upon it in another post:
'I think the times were different back then and also the communities were somewhat different, too. Like with UO and Everquest, we were all exploring the new gaming genre, awed by the fact of a virtual world, and very openminded towards grouping. Of course many will look at the features of that time and think 'if a MMO had that then maybe it would give the same feeling back I had when I played that 1st MMO'.
The same applies to people for who WoW is their 1st MMO, they also look at other MMO's and compare them with how they experienced WoW when it was vanilla.
Your 1st MMO that you enjoy is in many ways like your 1st true love; it makes such a deep impression that you'll always initially compare other partners with that 1st one. And of course you'll notice differences. That your next partner isn't the same as your first doesn't mean though that the love can't be just as intense, it'll just be different.
The same applies to MMO's: wanting other MMO's to be the same as your 1st MMO in the hope that it'll give you the initial bliss and sense of wonder back when you first made your entrance in the world of MMO's, that's ultimately a dead end road.
The genre evolves, I agree though how a game is set up can help or hinder a lot what traits will emerge and become prevalent in a community.'
I agree, but in that post I also suggested a way for us to recapture that sense of wonder. Specifically, I wrote about the need for developers to come up with something new and revolutionary that makes us feel that way again. You're right about the 'newness factor' being massively important to our appreciation of our first MMOs. What developers need to do is reclaim that sense of newness by innovating and coming up with genuinely new ideas. We need to stop churning out WoW clones and come up with something unique.
Of course, that's all really easy to say. How should it actually be done?
If I knew the answer to that, I'd be making the next great MMO. I don't know for sure, but I think there are a few directions in which such innovation might happen.
First, MMO combat mechanics stand to be upgraded dramatically. MMOs are far behind other genres in this regard. If you took the combat mechanics from modern MMOs and stuck them in a single player RPG, nobody would play. And that's a problem. Of course, I realize there are good technical reasons that MMO combat is so backwards. Nevertheless, it's still an area that, if revolutionized, could recreate that 'wow' factor for us.
Another channel for innovation could be the way we interface with MMOs. Specifically, with technologies like Kinect and Move coming out, maybe we're not so far away from MMOs integrating motion sensing capabilities. Maybe in a few years we'll be able to actually swing a sword and watch out characters do it on-screen in an MMO. And, with the current push for 3D, maybe we'll be able to watch it happen in three dimensions. This kind of interface innovation could also help draw us in again.
Comments
That's something that we call... game design.
OP, very well written post, and absolutely agree.
If you read up on the gaming history of the late '70s/start '80s, you will see that history is repeating itself. Due to crappy games back then, the consoles almost destroyed themselves as platform, because noone wanted the consoles when the games were that bad.
The platform (PC) will not be destroyed by the failure of the MMORPG, but the genre will - temporarily.
From the ashes, hopefully the games, that will fulfill this genre's potential, will rise.
Completely agree with you.
This is about artifical mechanics, which I can only assume means things that cause one to suspend their supsension of disbelief.
Yep. Lets add summoning there is nothing more artificial then every single thing being able to teleport players to them. Lets make everything above a certain level immune to CC spells just for giggles. And on, and on with the artifical limitations to combat to a system designed by the glorious McQuaid. These artifical mechanics and contstraints were all added because McQuaid screwed up when creating his diverse skill set for combat and that allowed people to work outside of his box.
Now, I go back to my original argument. EQ, the golden oldie that so many herald as the way, would have been WoW if McQuaid had more time, money, and people to pull off his vision. The only difference would have been a group focus.
Forever looking for employment. Life is rather dull without it.
I couldn't agree more. I think it boils down to the fact that sandbox style games take much more monitoring and proactive administrators. A themepark style game can just be set up and is for the most part hands off. Not to mention WoW hit a gold mine and everyone else wants a piece of the pie. In time sandbox will emerge again and those that didn't know what they were missing will understand posts like this one.
There are sandbox MMOs out there and people play them. Of course, they may be populated by 2 or 3 players, and a barren world to explore. Cheers.
That's odd, because the one that I've been playing for many years has well over 300,000 players and that number only grows with time. Cheers rejected, find another glass to clink.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
Will take about 1 month of a true sandbox with no theme park attractions before everyone fled to the newest themepark release.
The OP doesnt get it, people dont want a game that lacks theme park activites and doesnt have a set goal or objective.
Successful sand box no-themepark games: 0
Successful theme park heavy games : take your pick
I really want someone to just do it, make a damn uber sandbox so it can be proven that it wont hold an audience larger than vanguard's current.
Problem with these games is the more sandboxy and less them-parky you get, the less chance that you can log in for an hour or two and accomplish anything. Most people DONT have 14 hours a day to play, most players like logging in a few hours, doing a raid or a few pvp mini games or whatever.
Wrong
The point was, everyone has their own definition of what a sandbox is....you chose games that are ancient or dead, eve excluded. I would hardly call darkfall a success and SWG....not even close.
And for successful themepark games you chose the most successful.
I know i know everyone hates wow, its why its so damn popular right? (no i dont play)
And i only used vangurad as a population reference not a sandbox reference.
Also i might add that eve isnt really a sandbox
The point im trying to make is that the market has chosen one type of game over another. Keep telling everyone they are wrong...mabey youll get your real sandbox some day.
Hmm.
I might just be shooting into the wind, but perhaps developers should just make an entertaining game instead of sticking labels on it?
Just a sincere thought.
What do you guys think?
Where did you get that? not calling BS or anything, it sounds like a really good definition for Sandbox.
My Thoughts on Content Locust
So you put quotes around it and *poof* it becomes the definition?
Funny thing is, with that definition, the only sandbox i see is FreeRealms, which is nothing more than other players making their own themeparks.
Its all a false argument foisted on us by inept dev teams.
MMO's dont have to be sandbox or themepark,they can be both.Its just the dev teams suck so bad they cant even handle making one of the types decently,let alone having the brains and skill to combine them.
An MMO should have areas where civilization is in charge, and these areas should be themepark oriented.In addition an MMO should also have fringes,areas where there is little to no civilization and the player can choose to operate there,experiencing a sandbox setting.
The two areas should interact and affect each other.For instance, a leader in a civilized theme park section should sponsor players to go into the fringes sandbox area and try an establish settlements in his name etc...,that the player would run for him til the player gained independence or acquired higher rank than the leader.
And the sandox fringes area,should have factions that have goods and make deals that the civiliazed themepark section requires.And areas to really explore with things of real worth to be found.
AND BOTH should be able to change into the other.Perhaps a themepark civilization areas mines dry up,making the population move from it turning it into a fringe sandbox area.OR perhaps a new mine or civilization center gets founded in a fringe sandbox area,bringing with it population and interest groups that make the fringe area a civilization area.
The mmo worlds should have areas no player can even reach by the end of the first year of its play.And lots of new places and things to discover.And expansions should bring with them new areas,that can again take large amounts of realtime to even reach,let alone fully explore.
Instead we get incredibly crappy unfinished light versions that cant even accomplish one setting type adequately.Its the complete failure on the dev teams part that creates these false arguments.They dont have the skill or work ethic to do something, so we end up thinking we have to make a bad choice......which we really shouldnt have to make.
I've played these supposed "sandbox" games... UO, EVE, SWG, DF... and to be honest, I really can't find just what's so great about them.
The only one that I played more than a year was SWG, while it was a pretty fun game at times, (Mainly the PvP) The main activity was grinding missions... the game has also been pretty imbalanced/broken throughout it's entire career.
I can't say that I've had any more fun in the sandbox games than any themepark game.
I'm curious to know why so many people regard sandbox games as the holy grail of gaming. What is it? Skill progression? FFA PvP? Diversity?
From what I've found, class based games are more diverse than any skill progression game.
While I can see it's nice to be able to wonder off in any direction and experience the game as you see fit, it also makes it harder to balance the game.
If you wanted to you could take pretty much any themepark game there is and run off from the starting area if you wanted to.
Personally I really don't care if a game is labeled sandbox, or themepark, if it's fun, I'll play it.
List your reasons why sandbox is so much greater than themepark.
So you mean to tell me that after all these years, I've been nothing but a Themeparker? I shoulda just stuck it out with my old '04 Tauren hunter, I woulda been the king of Azeroth by now
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
Labels in theory would help us describe a game, like:
This game is Sandbox.
Instead of:
This is a game where a player's actions even small ones can affect all others players, and all actions together create a living and breathing virtual world. (That's only my definition)
As you can see, the first shorter and thus easier to do some marketing with it.
The problem is that no one agree about some of this concepts, like sandbox or FFA PvP or F2P.
And this make them pretty much useless, and it is even more useless to discuss if them fit in a game or not, because they don't mean anything.
@Garvon3: You seem to have different definitions of success for sandbox and themepark games. You can take any P2P themepark released within the last 10 years and they have been as successful as the sandbox games you listed, if not more.
Theme park style games encourage a certain style of gameplay. Specifically, games like WoW encourage lots of solo quest grinding and discourage community. They feel more like games and less like virtual worlds.
And that's fine, really. There might even be a bigger audience for it. But I think there's also a big, untapped audience that would jump all over a well-made sandbox MMO.
I wrote about some of this here if you're interested.
Virtual Reality
Agreed.
There's definitely a huge "something" I feel I'm missing when I play WoW.
I've never had the chance to really play a sandbox title, but I hope I get to in the future.
I'm looking at The Secret World, as that seems to be a sandboxy type of game.
Fingers are crossed.
The fact if a game is themepark or sandbox style says nothing about if its group or solo oriented play.
In a themepark MMO, its the quests that determine if its mainly solo or group oriented. This is different from game to game. You cant generally say that themepark MMO's cater to solo gameplay. It might be the case with current most popular themepark MMO's, but thats not because its a themepark MMO.
In the case of sandbox, well I think its best if we forget about the sandbox word. Its like the word grind, everyone gives their own meaning to that word. There is nothing more annoying then a thread about sandbox MMO's where every poster is talking about something different.
Nice link there, I read the blog
About that 'first MMO experience' and that initial sense of wonder, I commented upon it in another post:
'I think the times were different back then and also the communities were somewhat different, too. Like with UO and Everquest, we were all exploring the new gaming genre, awed by the fact of a virtual world, and very openminded towards grouping. Of course many will look at the features of that time and think 'if a MMO had that then maybe it would give the same feeling back I had when I played that 1st MMO'.
The same applies to people for who WoW is their 1st MMO, they also look at other MMO's and compare them with how they experienced WoW when it was vanilla.
Your 1st MMO that you enjoy is in many ways like your 1st true love; it makes such a deep impression that you'll always initially compare other partners with that 1st one. And of course you'll notice differences. That your next partner isn't the same as your first doesn't mean though that the love can't be just as intense, it'll just be different.
The same applies to MMO's: wanting other MMO's to be the same as your 1st MMO in the hope that it'll give you the initial bliss and sense of wonder back when you first made your entrance in the world of MMO's, that's ultimately a dead end road.
The genre evolves, I agree though how a game is set up can help or hinder a lot what traits will emerge and become prevalent in a community.'
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I suppose that's true. You could make an MMO where gameplay is very much on rails, but it still requires grouping. I guess that would be a group-oriented theme park game.
But the thing is, it would still feel like a game and not like a world. You would group with people, finish your common quests, and then part ways and never speak again. The very fact of always having a concrete goal discourages community and interaction. It's just the way we're wired. If we're on a job, we're less likely to stop and socialize. We turn into quest-completing robots.
And again - there's nothing wrong with that. There's a huge contingent of gamers that enjoys that type of gameplay. But there's also a huge contingent that doesn't, and would prefer something more free form. There are lots of people who don't want to follow a bunch of straight lines to reach max level, and would instead rather wander and meander and make their own way. There's just something more immersive about not always chasing after some quest object or another, and instead advancing in whatever manner you feel like.
Virtual Reality
I agree, but in that post I also suggested a way for us to recapture that sense of wonder. Specifically, I wrote about the need for developers to come up with something new and revolutionary that makes us feel that way again. You're right about the 'newness factor' being massively important to our appreciation of our first MMOs. What developers need to do is reclaim that sense of newness by innovating and coming up with genuinely new ideas. We need to stop churning out WoW clones and come up with something unique.
Of course, that's all really easy to say. How should it actually be done?
If I knew the answer to that, I'd be making the next great MMO. I don't know for sure, but I think there are a few directions in which such innovation might happen.
First, MMO combat mechanics stand to be upgraded dramatically. MMOs are far behind other genres in this regard. If you took the combat mechanics from modern MMOs and stuck them in a single player RPG, nobody would play. And that's a problem. Of course, I realize there are good technical reasons that MMO combat is so backwards. Nevertheless, it's still an area that, if revolutionized, could recreate that 'wow' factor for us.
Another channel for innovation could be the way we interface with MMOs. Specifically, with technologies like Kinect and Move coming out, maybe we're not so far away from MMOs integrating motion sensing capabilities. Maybe in a few years we'll be able to actually swing a sword and watch out characters do it on-screen in an MMO. And, with the current push for 3D, maybe we'll be able to watch it happen in three dimensions. This kind of interface innovation could also help draw us in again.
Virtual Reality