I'm sure this has already been said but the mechanics in games these days all playout the same way, just about. There are very very few exceptions. Eve, face of mankind, etc...
The rest is pretty much, Monster grind for xp, monster grind for gear, quest grind for xp, quest grind for gear. Expansion Repeat.
I would like to see new mechanics, new takes on games. Diffrent styles of games. More streamlined games (less instancing).
Now days, the companys that do try to do new things, are very underfunded and even in some cases (mortal online) not even knowledgable enough to create a great game.
Until we get some companies who don't want to try and chase the wow bandwagon and try to make another mmo of that type, we will continue to see sucky games. I would love to see soome companies do other things, but most of them lack the funding as other folks point out.
Meanwhile were stuck with reskins of the same old stuff.
doesn't help that anything really new and different that comes out gets universally panned for not being the same old same old.
grrrrrrr
Yes and unfortunatly thats why a lot of companies dont want to go outside the box, there is a comfort level here with the way things are done.
New and different was FE, AOC had some different combat, EVE is different but they been around a while. There are a few but not many.
I would like to see some type of sandbox mmo where you can just wander around and do stuff, and not have to rely on go kil 10 rats, go collect 5 rat fang. I remember when swg first came out you could do whatever, yes the quickest way to make cash was to do qust but nothing forced you into that mode until the first cu. The pre ce was the closest thing to sandbox that I ever seen.
OH well here hoping swtor will be new and different, gosh knows they thrown tons of cash at it.
The mmo market it the biggest it's even been and continues to grow every year. Maybe mmo's are lame for you, but millions of people would disagree with you.
doesn't help that anything really new and different that comes out gets universally panned for not being the same old same old.
grrrrrrr
Thats because either people are resistant to change and/or they prefer familiarity in their products. Innovation doesn't have to be completely throughout a product. As mentioned before, smaller evolutionary steps usually have a greater possibility of being accepted than huge innovative ones.
Unfortunately, to some people, unless an MMO in 100% completely innovative in all that it does, they resort to labelling it as a "WoW Clone". As Jon Wood said in the article in my sig below,"...labeling each and every new MMO release a WoW Clone in the way that some people have been serves to do nothing but reduce the entire genre (both pre and post World of Warcraft) to a single game" which doesn't help matters. Which is generalising to the extreme and a refusal to acknowledge the subtle differences between the games.
I just wanted to say that Addiction /= fun. Yeah, Blizzard makes a lot of money. So does Zynga, etc... Through the use of Skinner Box tactics. They are designed to hook you and keep you playing and feeding them money whether you personally enjoy it or not. Just like Smokers and Alcoholics.
The alternative to making a Skinner box game is to add more content more frequently, but that would require A LOT more work and money.
I prefer the older mmorpgs. If you look pre-WoW, the games were much more "free" as opposed to games post-WoW, where they all pretty much tell you exactly where to go and what to do. I liked it better exploring the land and finding things to do on my own. I guess I'm in the minority there though, because there are no new games like that anymore.
As to the games I played pre-WoW I'm talking about Asheron's Call and Star Wars: Galaxies. I hear Ultima Online was like this as well, but never played it. I also never played EverQuest for an extended period of time, so I can't comment on that game.
I just see that since WoW all the mmorpgs pretty much follow the same formula and it's become "lame" because it doesn't feel new anymore. I have high hopes for the "World of Darkness" mmorpg that is underway, as I think that might be the only game in the near-ish (2014 at the latest I hope) future that might allow us to be "free" again.
They have gone down hill in my opinion because of the people who play them. Even the pkers in UO had more manners than the vast majority of players I have met in games since then. IMO raiding has destroyed all of what mmos could be.
One reason can think of right away are fanboys behind every developer. Whenever developers come out with shit fanboys start to patrol forums shouting over everybody who dares to express some doubts. Sometimes I wonder if those fanboys get some goodies from developers PR departments. I'm pretty sure some do.
They get "their" game. A game they can be a top dog in because they have the time and like the play style. This goes to all games. Early UO had rampant PKing, and those players who could build their characters and had the desire to PK "won". They were the richest, had the best gear, etc. Same thing in EQ, WoW, and all the other clones, only for a different subset of players. Those who had the time and desire to level grind were the top players, getting to and defeating raids first. Later on, more players joined them as "top players", maybe only in their own minds though.
A problem here is that as these games evolve, the masses demand an easier entrance to what the "top players" have, and the masses' voice is important. So they make their games easier, and easier, and easier. The alternative is to change the very foundation of the game, and that's a very big no-no that no company (outside of Sony and EA) dare to risk.
I've felt this for a very long time. If they really want to make a game for the masses to enjoy, they need to get away from the "leet" player demands. And it needs to be from the get go, because changing a game to that degree can kill it's current subs while maybe never picking up the new, as an already established game.
You can blame the new ADD generation for current MMOs. They feel they're not having fun if they cant max their characters in one week while playing 1½ minutes a day.
In few years you'll have MMOs where one kill = one level and people will still claim it's not casual enough.
In my opinion, the main reason there is so much attention to MMOs and their success / failure factor is that MMO's have never been so big and under so much attention as they are now. The base bas been growing over the years so much, people have incorporated having a PC in their lives as a norm. PC games are not just for the old school computer nerds, they are enveloped in social, school, business, and casual time. MMO's are being played now by people that would have never played before so right now there are so many different styles that are being caterred to. Honestly that might explain the watered down let's try and appeal to as many of this new broad base as we have. It's the player base expansion that is really directly responsible for the direction games have gone. Is it good or bad, it's hard to agree to one side or the other. There have been some great games in the past 10 years, but honestly I can hardly say that over the past few years. Yes the MMO industry seems a bit stagnet at the moment, I have hopes however that this year and 2011 might be the turning point for what we expect in online gaming.
You should try AoC , i did alot of free trials of games that everyone else was telling me to play, after I got banned from AION, while looking for another game to enjoy. Now, I am on my AoC free trial, and when that is up I am almost certain I am paying the 30 dollars for the entire game and xpac.. that also buys me a free month.
I was in the same position as you, after being banned from AION and trying out other games through their trials and I have found one i like.. Good graphics, lots of people around(because they have like 3-4 servers), plenty to do, Voice over , fun combat.. just don't go melee. You will see what I mean, dark templar is a pain in the ass to pvp with , they got this wierd combo thing range players just kite you.
Just because a game has a low population, this one is in the 100-300 k subs range I believe does not mean the servers are empty, and since from what I seen there was only 3-4 servers to pick from it means that they have healthy server populations.
Other games I tried and did not like.
Fallen Earth-sandbox mmo
Global Agenda- FPS / MMO?
EVE- sandbox space MMO
I played AION and liked the game after getting to around lvl 40+ they banned me because my account was hacked and I guess they don't know how to deal with that sort of thing. Will never get another NCsoft game, unless maybe GW2 since it will be free upon purchase.
Played WoW, don't really like it tbh, only thing good about it now is it is the lazy man's game. You don't have to leave Origrammer you can just que up and do bg's and dungeons all day. I don't like the character options or customizations, graphics are really cartoonish. Which I don't have a problem with, but just can't take myself seriously on that game ya know elves and cows riding rino's is not my thing.
SWG... I played that for longer than any of these other MMO's and I would say it is a 7 year old game. Was it ever good? Yea 7 years ago when MMO's were of lower quality. Even then it wasn't very good. Good things about SWG, the pvp is pretty balanced and fun , if and when it does happen. It is very easy to get to the top and you can pretty much buy everthing to be the best in that game, just learn your class.
cons of swg, crappy servers, bad outdated graphics, most of the people afk all their toons and everything else (if you play the game you will see why people would rather do this) low server populations with the exception of one, and i hear that one is a lag fest even if you aren not on the same planet as all of the activity. Their servers are crappy and outdated and just can't handle alot of people.
Now I seen videos for warhammer and liked the scenary graphics , but it just looked too much like wow for me to want to really get into, but if i decide I don't like AoC in the future I may check it out if I don't check out some of the newer MMO's that are coming out.
Devs dont need to be innovative, they dont have to think "outside the box" or try to actually do anything original or "Next Gen".
They just have to squeeze out the same crap they have been for years because they have learned that we will scoop it up and devour it every time.
Sure, players will bitch and whine about how much the game is fail (even though the hype level is 8.9 and everyone has been saying its a "Breath of Fresh Air" and "The New Hawtness") and Reviewers will post about how much the game sucks (even after posting for years about how this is the most anticipated game in gaming history), but you know what? Next year another slew of crappy games will release.
As long as Players keep buying the same lame crap, MMO Companies keep churning it out.
Why have MMOs become so lame? Because we keep buying lame MMOs.
Not sure how you figure that. Most MMO's these days are dying off, with only a handful maintaining or growing. Probably one of the most ambitious(as far as thinking outside the box) games in the past few years, Fallen Earth, is bleeding subs. On the other side of the coin, Alganon... the WoW copy of all WoW copies, is also crawling to its likely death. STO and CO are also on their way to screwedville.
Crappy, and even "decent" games are set for extinction.
To sum, if it's bad, it's dying. There's very little incentive for investors and developers to dump money and resources into a "me too" pile of crap. It's NOT working.
I really don't think MMOs seem so lame at the moment because of 'clone war -itis'.
There's a lot of unique games that have come and gone because they were too different.
It's partly tech and partly social.
"Player don't hate the game, game hate the player."
If you are trying to take a jab at SWTOR, it is not the "clone wars".
It is The Old Republic.
Clone wars is another type of MMO it is nothing like SWTOR and is being targetted for children.
TOR is the one that is highly aniticpated, not The Clone Wars.
And they say repeated use of marijuana doesn't cause brain damage.
It was a general Star Wars jab, cuz people are saying most new MMOs coming out look like WoW clones.
I heard the primary brain cell damagers actually comes from chemicals in rolling papers dude, might want to switch to a nickle-based hash pipe. The copper ones have lead in them, and that wouldn't help.
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
I really don't think MMOs seem so lame at the moment because of 'clone war -itis'.
There's a lot of unique games that have come and gone because they were too different.
It's partly tech and partly social.
"Player don't hate the game, game hate the player."
If you are trying to take a jab at SWTOR, it is not the "clone wars".
It is The Old Republic.
Clone wars is another type of MMO it is nothing like SWTOR and is being targetted for children.
TOR is the one that is highly aniticpated, not The Clone Wars.
And they say repeated use of marijuana doesn't cause brain damage.
It was a general Star Wars jab, cuz people are saying most new MMOs coming out look like WoW clones.
I heard the primary brain cell damagers actually comes from chemicals in rolling papers dude, might want to switch to a nickle-based hash pipe. The copper ones have lead in them, and that wouldn't help.
Yes, and from your previous post I would imagine that you smoke plenty of it and like a champ.
I find one of the reasons MMMOs feel lame lately is because the developers are giving us what the fanboys have been asking for more WoW clones. For the last several years WoW has been the MMO to beat; unfortunately for one reason or another no game has really been able to do this. The problem arises when people assume that these games do not succeed in dethroning WoW do to the idea that WoW is the end all to what a MMORPG should be. I think as gamers we need to more open to other possibilities and stop being raving fanboys to a particular product or company.
I hear people ask all the time why do we keep getting WoW clones that are not as good as WoW. That reason is that is what the gaming community as a whole has clammered for; the fanboys refuse to accept any game that strays even a tiny bit from the WoW formula. To prove my point go to any forum discussing the TRINITY; you will finda number of post extalling why games have to have it based on the shear merit that becouse WoW is the most succesful MMO out their and has the Trinity in it.
"Never pay more than 20 bucks for a computer game."-Guybrush Threepwood "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."-Hunter S. Thompson
I find one of the reasons MMMOs feel lame lately is because the developers are giving us what the fanboys have been asking for more WoW clones. For the last several years WoW has been the MMO to beat; unfortunately for one reason or another no game has really been able to do this. The problem arises when people assume that these games do not succeed in dethroning WoW do to the idea that WoW is the end all to what a MMORPG should be. I think as gamers we need to more open to other possibilities and stop being raving fanboys to a particular product or company.
I hear people ask all the time why do we keep getting WoW clones that are not as good as WoW. That reason is that is what the gaming community as a whole has clammered for; the fanboys refuse to accept any game that strays even a tiny bit from the WoW formula. To prove my point go to any forum discussing the TRINITY; you will finda number of post extalling why games have to have it based on the shear merit that becouse WoW is the most succesful MMO out their and has the Trinity in it.
I hate to break it to ya, but they had healer classes long before WoW.
I find one of the reasons MMMOs feel lame lately is because the developers are giving us what the fanboys have been asking for more WoW clones. For the last several years WoW has been the MMO to beat; unfortunately for one reason or another no game has really been able to do this. The problem arises when people assume that these games do not succeed in dethroning WoW do to the idea that WoW is the end all to what a MMORPG should be. I think as gamers we need to more open to other possibilities and stop being raving fanboys to a particular product or company.
I hear people ask all the time why do we keep getting WoW clones that are not as good as WoW. That reason is that is what the gaming community as a whole has clammered for; the fanboys refuse to accept any game that strays even a tiny bit from the WoW formula. To prove my point go to any forum discussing the TRINITY; you will finda number of post extalling why games have to have it based on the shear merit that becouse WoW is the most succesful MMO out their and has the Trinity in it.
I hate to break it to ya, but they had healer classes long before WoW.
That was not my point I have nothing against the Trinity. I was merely pointing out that WoW fanboys hold back any real advancement in MMORPGs; just like EQ fanboys before it. WoW broke the EQ mold, but now we suffer from the same problem as before. We need some dev to brake the WoW mold and show us you do not have to be a WoW clone to be successful.
"Never pay more than 20 bucks for a computer game."-Guybrush Threepwood "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."-Hunter S. Thompson
Enough with this discussion! :P MMO's have not become lame. It is all just a misperception.
When there was only one or two MMO's in existence they were nice and busy and everyone played them.
MMO's haven't changed much. There are just too many choices. With the market flooded with MMO choices, the population is now spread out and now every game is thin on population, with one exception. Turns out it is the high population that makes any game work. Take that out of the equation and the game is "lame".
The secret to WOW is that the population is there, so people flock there because many mainstreamers want to be where everyone else is, e.g. Facebook.
The problem to developers these days is that they have not figured out how to market their MMO to be the next facebook of MMO's. The core of the game is not as important as the strength the game has to connect people to each other. Blizzard's work on setting up that new system that allows players to be friends among different games is 100% relevant and that is going to guarantee their subs stay up.
Look at popular facebook games, farmville, mob wars, etc. They are truly LAME. But look at all the people who play it because how well they are integrated into the social networking site.
In the short term, an MMO needs to be made well, but PEOPLE make a MMO great over the long haul.
Just like there can only be one main social networking site, Facebook (MySpace lost). There will always be one main MMO game for the masses. The next MMO developer that integrates more networking into their games will be the next winner
Devs dont need to be innovative, they dont have to think "outside the box" or try to actually do anything original or "Next Gen".
They just have to squeeze out the same crap they have been for years because they have learned that we will scoop it up and devour it every time.
Sure, players will bitch and whine about how much the game is fail (even though the hype level is 8.9 and everyone has been saying its a "Breath of Fresh Air" and "The New Hawtness") and Reviewers will post about how much the game sucks (even after posting for years about how this is the most anticipated game in gaming history), but you know what? Next year another slew of crappy games will release.
As long as Players keep buying the same lame crap, MMO Companies keep churning it out.
Why have MMOs become so lame? Because we keep buying lame MMOs.
Not sure how you figure that. Most MMO's these days are dying off, with only a handful maintaining or growing. Probably one of the most ambitious(as far as thinking outside the box) games in the past few years, Fallen Earth, is bleeding subs. On the other side of the coin, Alganon... the WoW copy of all WoW copies, is also crawling to its likely death. STO and CO are also on their way to screwedville.
Crappy, and even "decent" games are set for extinction.
To sum, if it's bad, it's dying. There's very little incentive for investors and developers to dump money and resources into a "me too" pile of crap. It's NOT working.
Yea I got a one year sub to fallen earth, there will not be a resub. The reasons are many. The nerf to crafting. The fired devs/cms and other folks. Used to be you could find a hazmat member when you wanted one. The addition of blood sports. Not to mention some changes to the way buffs stack thats mostly what chased of tons of folks, and then the changes to some of the combat. Nowdays I can got 3 to 4 hours without seing anybody chat even in the lb faction channel. I might see 2-3 folks max around in high level areas all night durring prime time. I hate that becasue it really was a great game, now it is darn near impossible to get a group unless you go to gank some poor fool in one of the pvp areas.
Comments
I'm sure this has already been said but the mechanics in games these days all playout the same way, just about. There are very very few exceptions. Eve, face of mankind, etc...
The rest is pretty much, Monster grind for xp, monster grind for gear, quest grind for xp, quest grind for gear. Expansion Repeat.
I would like to see new mechanics, new takes on games. Diffrent styles of games. More streamlined games (less instancing).
Now days, the companys that do try to do new things, are very underfunded and even in some cases (mortal online) not even knowledgable enough to create a great game.
Until we get some companies who don't want to try and chase the wow bandwagon and try to make another mmo of that type, we will continue to see sucky games. I would love to see soome companies do other things, but most of them lack the funding as other folks point out.
Meanwhile were stuck with reskins of the same old stuff.
Becouse mmo gamers are just about the whiniest bunch of drama queens the gaming world has ever known.
doesn't help that anything really new and different that comes out gets universally panned for not being the same old same old.
grrrrrrr
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Corpus Callosum
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Yes and unfortunatly thats why a lot of companies dont want to go outside the box, there is a comfort level here with the way things are done.
New and different was FE, AOC had some different combat, EVE is different but they been around a while. There are a few but not many.
I would like to see some type of sandbox mmo where you can just wander around and do stuff, and not have to rely on go kil 10 rats, go collect 5 rat fang. I remember when swg first came out you could do whatever, yes the quickest way to make cash was to do qust but nothing forced you into that mode until the first cu. The pre ce was the closest thing to sandbox that I ever seen.
OH well here hoping swtor will be new and different, gosh knows they thrown tons of cash at it.
OP:
The mmo market it the biggest it's even been and continues to grow every year. Maybe mmo's are lame for you, but millions of people would disagree with you.
Thats because either people are resistant to change and/or they prefer familiarity in their products. Innovation doesn't have to be completely throughout a product. As mentioned before, smaller evolutionary steps usually have a greater possibility of being accepted than huge innovative ones.
Unfortunately, to some people, unless an MMO in 100% completely innovative in all that it does, they resort to labelling it as a "WoW Clone". As Jon Wood said in the article in my sig below,"...labeling each and every new MMO release a WoW Clone in the way that some people have been serves to do nothing but reduce the entire genre (both pre and post World of Warcraft) to a single game" which doesn't help matters. Which is generalising to the extreme and a refusal to acknowledge the subtle differences between the games.
Top 10 Most Misused Words in MMO's
I just wanted to say that Addiction /= fun. Yeah, Blizzard makes a lot of money. So does Zynga, etc... Through the use of Skinner Box tactics. They are designed to hook you and keep you playing and feeding them money whether you personally enjoy it or not. Just like Smokers and Alcoholics.
The alternative to making a Skinner box game is to add more content more frequently, but that would require A LOT more work and money.
I prefer the older mmorpgs. If you look pre-WoW, the games were much more "free" as opposed to games post-WoW, where they all pretty much tell you exactly where to go and what to do. I liked it better exploring the land and finding things to do on my own. I guess I'm in the minority there though, because there are no new games like that anymore.
As to the games I played pre-WoW I'm talking about Asheron's Call and Star Wars: Galaxies. I hear Ultima Online was like this as well, but never played it. I also never played EverQuest for an extended period of time, so I can't comment on that game.
I just see that since WoW all the mmorpgs pretty much follow the same formula and it's become "lame" because it doesn't feel new anymore. I have high hopes for the "World of Darkness" mmorpg that is underway, as I think that might be the only game in the near-ish (2014 at the latest I hope) future that might allow us to be "free" again.
They have gone down hill in my opinion because of the people who play them. Even the pkers in UO had more manners than the vast majority of players I have met in games since then. IMO raiding has destroyed all of what mmos could be.
They get "their" game. A game they can be a top dog in because they have the time and like the play style. This goes to all games. Early UO had rampant PKing, and those players who could build their characters and had the desire to PK "won". They were the richest, had the best gear, etc. Same thing in EQ, WoW, and all the other clones, only for a different subset of players. Those who had the time and desire to level grind were the top players, getting to and defeating raids first. Later on, more players joined them as "top players", maybe only in their own minds though.
A problem here is that as these games evolve, the masses demand an easier entrance to what the "top players" have, and the masses' voice is important. So they make their games easier, and easier, and easier. The alternative is to change the very foundation of the game, and that's a very big no-no that no company (outside of Sony and EA) dare to risk.
I've felt this for a very long time. If they really want to make a game for the masses to enjoy, they need to get away from the "leet" player demands. And it needs to be from the get go, because changing a game to that degree can kill it's current subs while maybe never picking up the new, as an already established game.
Once upon a time....
I was casual player before MMOs became "casual"
You can blame the new ADD generation for current MMOs. They feel they're not having fun if they cant max their characters in one week while playing 1½ minutes a day.
In few years you'll have MMOs where one kill = one level and people will still claim it's not casual enough.
I really don't think MMOs seem so lame at the moment because of 'clone war -itis'.
There's a lot of unique games that have come and gone because they were too different.
It's partly tech and partly social.
"Player don't hate the game, game hate the player."
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
In my opinion, the main reason there is so much attention to MMOs and their success / failure factor is that MMO's have never been so big and under so much attention as they are now. The base bas been growing over the years so much, people have incorporated having a PC in their lives as a norm. PC games are not just for the old school computer nerds, they are enveloped in social, school, business, and casual time. MMO's are being played now by people that would have never played before so right now there are so many different styles that are being caterred to. Honestly that might explain the watered down let's try and appeal to as many of this new broad base as we have. It's the player base expansion that is really directly responsible for the direction games have gone. Is it good or bad, it's hard to agree to one side or the other. There have been some great games in the past 10 years, but honestly I can hardly say that over the past few years. Yes the MMO industry seems a bit stagnet at the moment, I have hopes however that this year and 2011 might be the turning point for what we expect in online gaming.
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~V
You should try AoC , i did alot of free trials of games that everyone else was telling me to play, after I got banned from AION, while looking for another game to enjoy. Now, I am on my AoC free trial, and when that is up I am almost certain I am paying the 30 dollars for the entire game and xpac.. that also buys me a free month.
I was in the same position as you, after being banned from AION and trying out other games through their trials and I have found one i like.. Good graphics, lots of people around(because they have like 3-4 servers), plenty to do, Voice over , fun combat.. just don't go melee. You will see what I mean, dark templar is a pain in the ass to pvp with , they got this wierd combo thing range players just kite you.
Just because a game has a low population, this one is in the 100-300 k subs range I believe does not mean the servers are empty, and since from what I seen there was only 3-4 servers to pick from it means that they have healthy server populations.
Other games I tried and did not like.
Fallen Earth-sandbox mmo
Global Agenda- FPS / MMO?
EVE- sandbox space MMO
I played AION and liked the game after getting to around lvl 40+ they banned me because my account was hacked and I guess they don't know how to deal with that sort of thing. Will never get another NCsoft game, unless maybe GW2 since it will be free upon purchase.
Played WoW, don't really like it tbh, only thing good about it now is it is the lazy man's game. You don't have to leave Origrammer you can just que up and do bg's and dungeons all day. I don't like the character options or customizations, graphics are really cartoonish. Which I don't have a problem with, but just can't take myself seriously on that game ya know elves and cows riding rino's is not my thing.
SWG... I played that for longer than any of these other MMO's and I would say it is a 7 year old game. Was it ever good? Yea 7 years ago when MMO's were of lower quality. Even then it wasn't very good. Good things about SWG, the pvp is pretty balanced and fun , if and when it does happen. It is very easy to get to the top and you can pretty much buy everthing to be the best in that game, just learn your class.
cons of swg, crappy servers, bad outdated graphics, most of the people afk all their toons and everything else (if you play the game you will see why people would rather do this) low server populations with the exception of one, and i hear that one is a lag fest even if you aren not on the same planet as all of the activity. Their servers are crappy and outdated and just can't handle alot of people.
Now I seen videos for warhammer and liked the scenary graphics , but it just looked too much like wow for me to want to really get into, but if i decide I don't like AoC in the future I may check it out if I don't check out some of the newer MMO's that are coming out.
If you are trying to take a jab at SWTOR, it is not the "clone wars".
It is The Old Republic.
Clone wars is another type of MMO it is nothing like SWTOR and is being targetted for children.
TOR is the one that is highly aniticpated, not The Clone Wars.
Not sure how you figure that. Most MMO's these days are dying off, with only a handful maintaining or growing. Probably one of the most ambitious(as far as thinking outside the box) games in the past few years, Fallen Earth, is bleeding subs. On the other side of the coin, Alganon... the WoW copy of all WoW copies, is also crawling to its likely death. STO and CO are also on their way to screwedville.
Crappy, and even "decent" games are set for extinction.
To sum, if it's bad, it's dying. There's very little incentive for investors and developers to dump money and resources into a "me too" pile of crap. It's NOT working.
And they say repeated use of marijuana doesn't cause brain damage.
It was a general Star Wars jab, cuz people are saying most new MMOs coming out look like WoW clones.
I heard the primary brain cell damagers actually comes from chemicals in rolling papers dude, might want to switch to a nickle-based hash pipe. The copper ones have lead in them, and that wouldn't help.
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
Yes, and from your previous post I would imagine that you smoke plenty of it and like a champ.
I find one of the reasons MMMOs feel lame lately is because the developers are giving us what the fanboys have been asking for more WoW clones. For the last several years WoW has been the MMO to beat; unfortunately for one reason or another no game has really been able to do this. The problem arises when people assume that these games do not succeed in dethroning WoW do to the idea that WoW is the end all to what a MMORPG should be. I think as gamers we need to more open to other possibilities and stop being raving fanboys to a particular product or company.
I hear people ask all the time why do we keep getting WoW clones that are not as good as WoW. That reason is that is what the gaming community as a whole has clammered for; the fanboys refuse to accept any game that strays even a tiny bit from the WoW formula. To prove my point go to any forum discussing the TRINITY; you will find a number of post extalling why games have to have it based on the shear merit that becouse WoW is the most succesful MMO out their and has the Trinity in it.
"Never pay more than 20 bucks for a computer game."-Guybrush Threepwood
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."-Hunter S. Thompson
I hate to break it to ya, but they had healer classes long before WoW.
That was not my point I have nothing against the Trinity. I was merely pointing out that WoW fanboys hold back any real advancement in MMORPGs; just like EQ fanboys before it. WoW broke the EQ mold, but now we suffer from the same problem as before. We need some dev to brake the WoW mold and show us you do not have to be a WoW clone to be successful.
"Never pay more than 20 bucks for a computer game."-Guybrush Threepwood
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."-Hunter S. Thompson
Enough with this discussion! :P MMO's have not become lame. It is all just a misperception.
When there was only one or two MMO's in existence they were nice and busy and everyone played them.
MMO's haven't changed much. There are just too many choices. With the market flooded with MMO choices, the population is now spread out and now every game is thin on population, with one exception. Turns out it is the high population that makes any game work. Take that out of the equation and the game is "lame".
The secret to WOW is that the population is there, so people flock there because many mainstreamers want to be where everyone else is, e.g. Facebook.
The problem to developers these days is that they have not figured out how to market their MMO to be the next facebook of MMO's. The core of the game is not as important as the strength the game has to connect people to each other. Blizzard's work on setting up that new system that allows players to be friends among different games is 100% relevant and that is going to guarantee their subs stay up.
Look at popular facebook games, farmville, mob wars, etc. They are truly LAME. But look at all the people who play it because how well they are integrated into the social networking site.
In the short term, an MMO needs to be made well, but PEOPLE make a MMO great over the long haul.
Just like there can only be one main social networking site, Facebook (MySpace lost). There will always be one main MMO game for the masses. The next MMO developer that integrates more networking into their games will be the next winner
Yea I got a one year sub to fallen earth, there will not be a resub. The reasons are many. The nerf to crafting. The fired devs/cms and other folks. Used to be you could find a hazmat member when you wanted one. The addition of blood sports. Not to mention some changes to the way buffs stack thats mostly what chased of tons of folks, and then the changes to some of the combat. Nowdays I can got 3 to 4 hours without seing anybody chat even in the lb faction channel. I might see 2-3 folks max around in high level areas all night durring prime time. I hate that becasue it really was a great game, now it is darn near impossible to get a group unless you go to gank some poor fool in one of the pvp areas.