I agree completely, however in order to not leave the genre entirely I've decided to play each of the new games and enjoy what they offer that I like and not spend so much time bemoaning what I wish they had.
I think there's fun to be found in almost every MMORPG, at least for a month or two. Long term though, probably not much out there.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Agreed. I expected the genre to be towards larger worlds, greater detail, greater immersion, greater scope of things to do and see, greater range of choices you can make for your characters. Clearly it hasn't.
For those of you who prefer the crap from yester-year, it's still there, go play it.
There are so many mmo's out there, enough to target every playstyle. Just because what you want isn't the most popular, that's hardly proof that the genre has gone downhill. The genre has grown and moved beyond you, leaving you in the dust.
Wrong. Incredibly wrong. I think the problem is the opposite. We expected a lot more after 10+ of the genre being around and are disappointed with how their development has been retarded.
Its not that the genre has moved beyond us, its that it hasnt caught up with our expectations.
Hate to say it, but it's the casual gamers with a sense of entitlement that's ruined the genre.
They don't want their games to be immersive, complex, and require some measure of effort to accomplish goals. They want everything to be instant gratification with as little time, effort, downtime, and consequences as possible.
I remember a time when playing an MMO meant being part of a community on an online virtual world that you were apart of. Today it's more synonymous with playing a massive multiplayer online single player game on rails.
Let's be honest here... you don't hate to say. In fact, I'll bet you couldn't wait to say it. That's the problem with this weird casual vs hardcore schism that has erupted. Hardcores think casuals are entitled and undeserving of rewards, and casuals think that hardcores are elitist pricks who commandeer a majority of developer attention to design end game content how they'd prefer.
And there's never a chance wasted to attack one side or the other.
I like to think MMOs have progressed from their ancestors of yore. I certaintly had fun playing EQ, and am in fact revisiting my old characters there, but DAoC was a vast improvement on the genre. From there I think WoW improved it further.
Everyone hates on WoW because it's popular. For some reason that's a bad thing in our eyes. It's like a band that you love before anyone else ever hears of it, then it becomes "mainstream" and now you hate it, but you reminisce about the days when it was only enjoyed by you and a few others. I think it's the same thing with MMOs. It was a concept we loved dearly before anyone else saw what was so great about them. Now it's popular and it's lost it's ability to make us feel unique.
You know its possible that 'hate to say it' was used in the context of hates having to say it because its true, but isn't happy that it is true. As in I hate saying that the current trend in mmo's is terrible because I wish it weren't the case. I'd be much happier saying that current MMO's have fulfilled my expectations of the genre, but I can't say it because its not true.
Happens to be true? That casual gamers have ruined the genre? That's a fact?
The only 'fact' is that there are people who don't like the current crop off MMO's, and those who do.
For those of you who prefer the crap from yester-year, it's still there, go play it.
There are so many mmo's out there, enough to target every playstyle. Just because what you want isn't the most popular, that's hardly proof that the genre has gone downhill. The genre has grown and moved beyond you, leaving you in the dust.
Wrong. Incredibly wrong. I think the problem is the opposite. We expected a lot more after 10+ of the genre being around and are disappointed with how their development has been retarded.
Its not that the genre has moved beyond us, its that it hasnt caught up with our expectations.
Ah, but wouldn't that be the fault of the expectations?
For those of you who prefer the crap from yester-year, it's still there, go play it.
There are so many mmo's out there, enough to target every playstyle. Just because what you want isn't the most popular, that's hardly proof that the genre has gone downhill. The genre has grown and moved beyond you, leaving you in the dust.
Wrong. Incredibly wrong. I think the problem is the opposite. We expected a lot more after 10+ of the genre being around and are disappointed with how their development has been retarded.
Its not that the genre has moved beyond us, its that it hasnt caught up with our expectations.
Ah, but wouldn't that be the fault of the expectations?
Simply put, no.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
These posts have become more redundant than the games they are criticizing. I remember when forums were a dream environment. Ten years ago I could log into a forum and have positive and productive conversations about the games I was playing. People were truly creative and conversations were open ended and free to go wherever I wanted to take them. Now it's all the same cookie-cutter crap. "Games all suck now because they are WoW clones." These watered down, casual forums are all a bunch of clones of each other. What a joke.
Now for a more serious response. When are people going to realize that 10 years ago there were about 700k people playing mmorpgs total as opposed to today when there are millions? The genre 10 years ago was simply not that appealing, people. If you were one of the few who loved it and loved it small, I feel a bit sorry for what you have to deal with today. You are also in the small minority. When you post threads like this one the people who are all applauding and agreeing with you were likely introduced to the genre because of WoW and because of what this genre has become. The hypocrisy on their part is laughable.
I was pleasantly surprised when I went from Apprentice to full 5 star Elite in under 2 months. I was pleasantly surprised again when I went from Elite to just barely Hardcore in 2 weeks. Apprentice, here I come!
Hate to say it, but it's the casual gamers with a sense of entitlement that's ruined the genre.
They don't want their games to be immersive, complex, and require some measure of effort to accomplish goals. They want everything to be instant gratification with as little time, effort, downtime, and consequences as possible.
I remember a time when playing an MMO meant being part of a community on an online virtual world that you were apart of. Today it's more synonymous with playing a massive multiplayer online single player game on rails.
Let's be honest here... you don't hate to say. In fact, I'll bet you couldn't wait to say it. That's the problem with this weird casual vs hardcore schism that has erupted. Hardcores think casuals are entitled and undeserving of rewards, and casuals think that hardcores are elitist pricks who commandeer a majority of developer attention to design end game content how they'd prefer.
And there's never a chance wasted to attack one side or the other.
I like to think MMOs have progressed from their ancestors of yore. I certaintly had fun playing EQ, and am in fact revisiting my old characters there, but DAoC was a vast improvement on the genre. From there I think WoW improved it further.
Everyone hates on WoW because it's popular. For some reason that's a bad thing in our eyes. It's like a band that you love before anyone else ever hears of it, then it becomes "mainstream" and now you hate it, but you reminisce about the days when it was only enjoyed by you and a few others. I think it's the same thing with MMOs. It was a concept we loved dearly before anyone else saw what was so great about them. Now it's popular and it's lost it's ability to make us feel unique.
You know its possible that 'hate to say it' was used in the context of hates having to say it because its true, but isn't happy that it is true. As in I hate saying that the current trend in mmo's is terrible because I wish it weren't the case. I'd be much happier saying that current MMO's have fulfilled my expectations of the genre, but I can't say it because its not true.
Happens to be true? That casual gamers have ruined the genre? That's a fact?
The only 'fact' is that there are people who don't like the current crop off MMO's, and those who do.
Relax, follow the whole conversation. It only needs to be true for the person who is speaking.
The early MMO’s were created by gamers and visionaries
They were really good
The first MMO I ever played was UO. Granted it wasn’t in 3D but it had everything. Housing, taming, mounts, open world – no instances, ships, rare loot, exploration, maps, tradeskills….it had it all. It was far, far from perfect but it had a clear vision and a visionary behind it. This was a true virtual world.
The second MMO I ever played was EQ. Feature wise it was actually a step down from UO but it added a whole bunch of new things. 3D, group dynamics, raiding. It still felt like a virtual world however.
Original SWG is another game that stands out for me. It was actually very close to UO in terms of features and had some great game play elements – crafting to name one. Some UO devs behind this one. I always thought the SWG engine would have been great for a UO2.
Everything after those games has just not held my attention. I never played WoW. I played EQ2 on and off for awhile but was never happy with it. Currently playing RIFT but account is cancelled. Lazy devs have me running the same instances every night chasing plaques for purple gear…in the same dungeons I leveled up in (just with harder mobs now). I cant stand the quest grind, I cant stand the linear scripted dungeons. I want to get lost in some open world dungeon with my buddies and just kill shit for a few hours. MMO’s don’t need a story line. With 1000’s of players we should be able to make our own.
The early games were so grindy, tedious, and devoid of real gameplay that it was pretty obvious why their populations were so small (because they offered nothing to anyone: hardcore or casual gamer.) WW2O in particular I find it odd anyone would stick through, given the amount of excessively tedious non-fun in that game (especially compared with Planetside.)
Fast forward, genuine and varied gameplay is added, the genre explodes. Players like myself stop hopping endlessly between lackluster timesinks and settle on genuinely fun games.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The early games were so grindy, tedious, and devoid of real gameplay that it was pretty obvious why their populations were so small (because they offered nothing to anyone: hardcore or casual gamer.) WW2O in particular I find it odd anyone would stick through, given the amount of excessively tedious non-fun in that game (especially compared with Planetside.)
Fast forward, genuine and varied gameplay is added, the genre explodes. Players like myself stop hopping endlessly between lackluster timesinks and settle on genuinely fun games.
LOL
ohh man that was a right old laugh that was!
Fast forward, genuine and varied gameplay?! Genuinely fun games?!
Right so you consider logging onto themepark format game and picking up quests A B C and D. A is a pick up, B is a kill quest, C is an escort and D is a drops quest.
You head over to quest hub III and begin completing quests a b c and d. You then grab warfront A and run it once. Then you head into generic instance B2 and run that, generally not saying three words to the people there because alls that matters to 90% of people is getting to that end game where the REAL FUN IS!!!
You arrive at end game in generic themepark MMO and make THE choice, will I grind pvp or will I grind PVE expert/heroics. You have selected to do both! (omg both!) then you grind 3 experts for badges/marks/whatever and a few drops. The after that you grind out 10000 honour/fame/favor ready to make those very important gear purchases.
Fast forward two months!
Your sat on your pile of expert dungeon and pvp gear and then the last door awaits you, raiding! You join raiding guild 20302 and join up 3 times at a week from 6 pm to 11 pm to raid the same raids every time. You do this for 4 months slowly getting the drops you want.
Then there it is, you have the best gear you can get, your king of the castle, three options await you..
A - Run around capital city in circles for 8 months waiting for expansion to do it all over again.
B - Make an alt and do it all over again.
C - Move over to generic Themepark game 2, and do the same damned things over again.
The early games were so grindy, tedious, and devoid of real gameplay that it was pretty obvious why their populations were so small (because they offered nothing to anyone: hardcore or casual gamer.) WW2O in particular I find it odd anyone would stick through, given the amount of excessively tedious non-fun in that game (especially compared with Planetside.)
Fast forward, genuine and varied gameplay is added, the genre explodes. Players like myself stop hopping endlessly between lackluster timesinks and settle on genuinely fun games.
LOL
ohh man that was a right old laugh that was!
Fast forward, genuine and varied gameplay?! Genuinely fun games?!
Right so you consider logging onto themepark format game and picking up quests A B C and D. A is a pick up, B is a kill quest, C is an escort and D is a drops quest.
You head over to quest hub III and begin completing quests a b c and d. You then grab warfront A and run it once. Then you head into generic instance B2 and run that, generally not saying three words to the people there because alls that matters to 90% of people is getting to that end game where the REAL FUN IS!!!
You arrive at end game in generic themepark MMO and make THE choice, will I grind pvp or will I grind PVE expert/heroics. You have selected to do both! (omg both!) then you grind 3 experts for badges/marks/whatever and a few drops. The after that you grind out 10000 honour/fame/favor ready to make those very important gear purchases.
Fast forward two months!
Your sat on your pile of expert dungeon and pvp gear and then the last door awaits you, raiding! You join raiding guild 20302 and join up 3 times at a week from 6 pm to 11 pm to raid the same raids every time. You do this for 4 months slowly getting the drops you want.
Then there it is, you have the best gear you can get, your king of the castle, three options await you..
A - Run around capital city in circles for 8 months waiting for expansion to do it all over again.
B - Make an alt and do it all over again.
C - Move over to generic Themepark game 2, and do the same damned things over again.
Heck, Ene...you make it sound like theres a crap load of stuff to do in WoW. I wander what everyones been complaining about? Axehilt's common sense seems to have enraged you.
Opinions, expectations, an overly inflated sense of entitlement, and poor community. Those are the symptoms. Find the cause. These games are not the infection. You see, it's rather a revolutionary idea really. If it tastes bad, stop eating it. Supply and demand regulates that which is produced. If there were no demand for such titles that are in existence today, they would not be here. Sounds to me you are a minority in this equation and enjoy that aspect. However Accusing the majority for their demand is, well shameful. I reiterate my point, if you are not happy with the content of current titles, as a minority you need to support products from those companies that supply your demand. If there are none, be proactive instead of reactive and write, email said companies. Invest in these companies if they are publicly traded. There is also the approach of education and then manifesting your "dreams" into a reality.
Hate to say it, but it's the casual gamers with a sense of entitlement that's ruined the genre.
They don't want their games to be immersive, complex, and require some measure of effort to accomplish goals. They want everything to be instant gratification with as little time, effort, downtime, and consequences as possible.
I remember a time when playing an MMO meant being part of a community on an online virtual world that you were apart of. Today it's more synonymous with playing a massive multiplayer online single player game on rails.
Let's be honest here... you don't hate to say. In fact, I'll bet you couldn't wait to say it. That's the problem with this weird casual vs hardcore schism that has erupted. Hardcores think casuals are entitled and undeserving of rewards, and casuals think that hardcores are elitist pricks who commandeer a majority of developer attention to design end game content how they'd prefer.
And there's never a chance wasted to attack one side or the other.
I like to think MMOs have progressed from their ancestors of yore. I certaintly had fun playing EQ, and am in fact revisiting my old characters there, but DAoC was a vast improvement on the genre. From there I think WoW improved it further.
Everyone hates on WoW because it's popular. For some reason that's a bad thing in our eyes. It's like a band that you love before anyone else ever hears of it, then it becomes "mainstream" and now you hate it, but you reminisce about the days when it was only enjoyed by you and a few others. I think it's the same thing with MMOs. It was a concept we loved dearly before anyone else saw what was so great about them. Now it's popular and it's lost it's ability to make us feel unique.
You know its possible that 'hate to say it' was used in the context of hates having to say it because its true, but isn't happy that it is true. As in I hate saying that the current trend in mmo's is terrible because I wish it weren't the case. I'd be much happier saying that current MMO's have fulfilled my expectations of the genre, but I can't say it because its not true.
Happens to be true? That casual gamers have ruined the genre? That's a fact?
The only 'fact' is that there are people who don't like the current crop off MMO's, and those who do.
The mainstream, aka casual gamers, are the ones who enjoy the current trend in MMOs. And yes, they are very much responsible for the state of things.
Over the past decade there has been growing chatter from what was originally nothing more than a fringe subset of gamer that demanded things be made 'easier' and more 'accessible' to them because: a) they didn't like the "grind", b) they didn't have the time, c) things were too hard for them, d) there's not enough "content".
The thing is, these are mostly subjective complaints. The games were too "grindy", "hard", and lacked "content" for them. The rest of the players were happy with the way things were. They enjoyed their games to be complex, involved, and immersive.
What's entirely ironic about the situation is that things are in many ways worse than they were before.
Today's MMOs are arguable more grindy than they were before. Why? Because "content" is designed to require players to jump through hoops for pre-determiend loot drops in one tier of content, just to be able to jump through another set of hoops to get gear for the next... and the next... and the next... all the while their power level is zero-sum, because every time they cap out their gear progression, the next content patch invalidates all of that work so they can grind through the next level of dungeons/raids for the next tier of gear.
As per content, now we have several people complaining that there's too much of it. Quests. Redundant, boring, quests. that's your content, you got what you asked for. So instead of players figuring out on their own how they wanted to play to their characters, all of that is pretty much decided for them by the developer by pushing players into questing. It used to be that quests were a rare thing, they only existed occasionally, and only to tie together epic tasks for players to complete. Completing a quest used to mean something, because quests were long, hard, but also very rewarding.
Today quests are nothing more than a mechanic used to guide players through the game by telling them what to do so they stop complaining that there's 'not enough to do'. Old MMOs didn't lack content at all. They had countless places to explore, enemies to kill, and other things to do. The only difference is that players didn't have quests every step of the way to tell them exactly where to go and what to do. Quests today are an overused mechanic to prod players into actually playing the game, rather than letting players figure out what they want to within the game on their own. A lot of people are starting to notice this, even the casual gamers.
I'll admit, the oldschool MMOs weren't perfect, not by any means. Many suffered from bugs or exploits, and sometimes even from inane or non-sense mechanics. But what made these MMOs enjoyable wasn't just the mechanics, it was the philosophy of design. The oldschool MMOs were designed to be virtual worlds for gamers to play in, together. That's what made them so fun for the 'oldschool' crowd, despite the flaws that were there, because those MMOs had soul.
Today's MMOs are quite contrary to the old design philosophy. They're not about creating fun virtual worlds for people to play together in. They're instead designed to catch the attention of as many people as possible by being as accessible as possible, and they're designed to be repetitive and grindy without appearing that way through use of 'instant gritification' rewards to create what amounts to an advancement treadmill to nowhere.
MMOs going mainstream has killed the heart and soul of MMOs, and that's why they're nothing more than a shadow of their former glory.
I'm of an opposing opinion. I don't blame "casuals" for the state of mmos today. I blame us, the oldschool gamers who led mmos in this direction from the beginning. We are the ones that complained about the time sinks, griefers/gankers, super long camp times, fighting over mobs, etc. It was us that caused the likes of UOs trammel, and SWGs NGE. We like to blame "casual" gamers who have only relatively recently joined "our" community, but mmos were long going in the steamlined, more action based direction already. We sounded the charge.
Now we're realizing it went too far. Devs noticed that when they started to steamline their games their subs increased. New games began to come out that took into account this growing casual population drawn to the faster paced mmos and the old ones, losing their subs, tried to do the same but it was too late.
Oldschoolers started to notice that these new games didn't make them feel special anymore. The day a 12 yr old beat one of them in pvp was the final straw and here we are.
Said it before I'll say it again (mainly because I'm bored)...I'd be happy with an open world form mmo system that allowed for player input. Give me the skeleton of a game and allow me to form the meat myself or play the varied imaginings of the general player population. The themepark model could still exist here as a base but the relative value of a particular character build or acquiring certain gear is based purely on concept as the wider world of portals can make anything possible.
GURPS Online if you will.
Let me worry about balance in my server/world/adventure. I don't have any great desire to flex my epeen with phony accomplishments I simply want to have a fun gaming session with an element of surprise and excitement.
Have a tiered server system for judging player made game worlds/modules. A grading system could be applied by the developer with player input that would translate to Server A where Server B could be freeform try as you will, etc.
A general character survey might determine the power or 'level' of a particular Your character could be loaded with outrageous gear and might be barred from low magic or low gear worlds/adventures for example. Point system or even word of mouth might define your character.
What is really supplied is the server load and base model as well as monitoring/ GM duties where appropriate. The possible problems with this model are limitless as well and it would take years to grow into something that the community ultimately defined.
I'm of an opposing opinion. I don't blame "casuals" for the state of mmos today. I blame us, the oldschool gamers who led mmos in this direction from the beginning. We are the ones that complained about the time sinks, griefers/gankers, super long camp times, fighting over mobs, etc. It was us that caused the likes of UOs trammel, and SWGs NGE. We like to blame "casual" gamers who have only relatively recently joined "our" community, but mmos were long going in the steamlined, more action based direction already. We sounded the charge.
Now we're realizing it went too far. Devs noticed that when they started to steamline their games their subs increased. New games began to come out that took into account this growing casual population drawn to the faster paced mmos and the old ones, losing their subs, tried to do the same but it was too late.
Oldschoolers started to notice that these new games didn't make them feel special anymore. The day a 12 yr old beat one of them in pvp was the final straw and here we are.
True enough.
But they pushed too far toward the opposite end of the spectrum. When a player can log into an mmo for 90 minutes and log out with a new epic item in their inventory, everything that makes the achievement of acquiring that item special is all but drained from the experience. In older games, you knew who the elite players were. The items they wore spoke volumes about their achievements. You knew them by name and reputation. Because reputation meant something to a player. Unlike today, where you can escape a bad rep with a simple name/server change you can pay real cash for.
"Epic" doesn't mean much anymore. And "elite" means even less.
I'm of an opposing opinion. I don't blame "casuals" for the state of mmos today. I blame us, the oldschool gamers who led mmos in this direction from the beginning. We are the ones that complained about the time sinks, griefers/gankers, super long camp times, fighting over mobs, etc. It was us that caused the likes of UOs trammel, and SWGs NGE. We like to blame "casual" gamers who have only relatively recently joined "our" community, but mmos were long going in the steamlined, more action based direction already. We sounded the charge.
Now we're realizing it went too far. Devs noticed that when they started to steamline their games their subs increased. New games began to come out that took into account this growing casual population drawn to the faster paced mmos and the old ones, losing their subs, tried to do the same but it was too late.
Oldschoolers started to notice that these new games didn't make them feel special anymore. The day a 12 yr old beat one of them in pvp was the final straw and here we are.
True enough.
But they pushed too far toward the opposite end of the spectrum. When a player can log into an mmo for 90 minutes and log out with a new epic item in their inventory, everything that makes the achievement of acquiring that item special is all but drained from the experience. In older games, you knew who the elite players were. The items they wore spoke volumes about their achievements. You knew them by name and reputation. Because reputation meant something to a player. Unlike today, where you can escape a bad rep with a simple name/server change you can pay real cash for.
"Epic" doesn't mean much anymore. And "elite" means even less.
By "elite", do you mean loser who sits in front of his computer for 8 hours per night?
When did "Time Spent Playing" because what matters most? Time is not difficulty. Any achievement you get simply by putting in "time" is absolutely worthless.
Originally posted by mmogawd Originally posted by Jennyfyr
Originally posted by otter3370
I'm of an opposing opinion. I don't blame "casuals" for the state of mmos today. I blame us, the oldschool gamers who led mmos in this direction from the beginning. We are the ones that complained about the time sinks, griefers/gankers, super long camp times, fighting over mobs, etc. It was us that caused the likes of UOs trammel, and SWGs NGE. We like to blame "casual" gamers who have only relatively recently joined "our" community, but mmos were long going in the steamlined, more action based direction already. We sounded the charge. Now we're realizing it went too far. Devs noticed that when they started to steamline their games their subs increased. New games began to come out that took into account this growing casual population drawn to the faster paced mmos and the old ones, losing their subs, tried to do the same but it was too late. Oldschoolers started to notice that these new games didn't make them feel special anymore. The day a 12 yr old beat one of them in pvp was the final straw and here we are.
True enough. But they pushed too far toward the opposite end of the spectrum. When a player can log into an mmo for 90 minutes and log out with a new epic item in their inventory, everything that makes the achievement of acquiring that item special is all but drained from the experience. In older games, you knew who the elite players were. The items they wore spoke volumes about their achievements. You knew them by name and reputation. Because reputation meant something to a player. Unlike today, where you can escape a bad rep with a simple name/server change you can pay real cash for. "Epic" doesn't mean much anymore. And "elite" means even less. By "elite", do you mean loser who sits in front of his computer for 8 hours per night? When did "Time Spent Playing" because what matters most? Time is not difficulty. Any achievement you get simply by putting in "time" is absolutely worthless.
I've made this comparison before, but while the MMO-games have changed, this concept of cloning and degraded quality for increased quanuity and speed is the focus of an entire decade. My original comparison was for audio, we went from high quality expensive and hard to replicate (vinyl), to cheaper, but still semi-hard to replicate with slightly less quality (tapes) to cheap as dirt, replicated instantly with a press of a button (mp3s) but the quality has suffered greatly. Audio is an easy example, but we did the same thing with all goods (From mom and pop stores, to Value Stores, to Wal-Mart) and MMOs don't seem to be an exception.
"They essentially want to say 'Correlation proves Causation' when it's just not true." - Sovrath
"I understand the frustration that i read often around here from people that come from UO, EQ, AC, SB, etc but we all know that era is over since a while , i guess we lived something good compared to what is experienced today. The very repressive nature of such websites never helped, with ego fueled powertripping moderators to money making gimmicks, those people never helped but make things worst. I hope each and everyone of you can find a happy place to game sooner or later, as i think most hardcore mmo players have been let down by the industry since a while. Until then, have fun folks!"
I come from that era and I have no complaints really. Games and gamers evolve, sometimes not for the best but I have no control over that. I don't need an open sandbox to have fun playing an MMO. It would be nice of course, but I don't wail away the nights wishing the developers would make a game solely for me and my sandbox needs. I consider myself a hardcore MMO player but the key word in that title is player. Not hardcore whiner, not hardcore opiner... I actually PLAY, and I have fun doing it.
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
I'm going to say here that MMORPGs have simply gotten worse. Since Everquest, DAoC, AO, and the like, we've pretty much had only EQ2, WoW, WoW with story quests, WoW as envisioned by Brad McQuaid, WoW with an emphasis on overland PVP, WoW with a repetitive PvE grind, and WoW with randomly spawning public quests.
Lol. loved your reply
IMO the thing "broke" when companies said "well, let's accomodate the single player gamers into our MMO's, that pie is big and we need a piece of it". Then they made the heavy-quest games which can be soloed to cap, When that's path the most players are going to take (soloing being the fastest way to get to cap and get gear etc), you cannot expect that at cap level everything to turn into a nice community with helpful, sharing people, not self-oriented, playing a game together.
In old games, many of us had great time running open dungeons together, camping spawns. Yes it might sound boring in pure gaming terms but we shared stories, talked about this and that, the game was just a "tool", we just "had fun" being there. Everything in the "heavy quest-based" games screams "come on, play alone!!", Even if i make a friend and we start questing together, tomorrow one of us will not be able to play, the one who played is "ahead" 2-3 quest hubs and we go separate paths. Also, the conversation tends to be dull, "how many wolf skins do you still need?", "how many centaurs you still need to kill?"
Back in the day I figured that by 2011, we'd be seeing games with so much to do in them that Id have a hard time figuring out what I wanted to do when I logged on!
I thought for sure we'd have such complexity and content that people who enjoy all types of play in MMOs would find their home in each and every game.
I also thought wed have games with 24/7 GMs who did nothing but run storylines with epic invasions, travelling merchants, and ongoing storylines that kept he game fresh and fun!
By now I figured, we'd be able to exist in standalone virtual worlds where everything you did impacted the world around you.
Of course I figured 10 years ago that with the way technology was speeding along that we'd have pure artistry, worlds where you could immerse yourself in as a the character you want to be, a place where you were more than just a set of min/max numbers.
Personally I find the whole genre to be stagnant as companies wont stop cranking out WoW clones. (Mind you I know its an EQ clone, but lets face it, its a spreading cancer that has brought all the creativity and life in the genre to a standstill)
I am thoroughly disappointed with the stagnant pond that is the MMO genre.
We've been dreaming the same dream. Sounds like some freakish mind connection. Maybe if we think hard enough we can make it materialize.......
I agree partly. However there is a flip side to that coin you're tossing in. Which is all the negative aspects of forced group play. Grouped MMO's do not create a wonderful world of which everyone is happy, "oh look a unicorn". In fact, it creates a drag effect, that slows the progress of game advancement. A strategy implemented by your so loved and cherished companies to make more dollars. The mind set is simple. The longer you play, the more you pay. In the world of MMO's, if I have to tolerate children, wastes of time, bio breaks, mom aggro, spouse aggro, child aggro, or any other down time, I prefer it to be at the end of the game, where it is important to group any way. Given the choice I much rather enjoy the world on my terms with as little headache as possible. I've paid my dues putting up with players and wasting a night/day of game play on poor individuals and bad behavior. Attacking solo-ability will win you nothing. Seeing that the majority approves, and these companies are happy to provide. The system of forced grouping dies as all things do that are stagnant. Nothing new has come about adding features to evolve that style of game play. I'm not saying forced grouping is terrible. It does have it faults. However today, Grouping or solo-ability does not make a game great. The game does most of that, it's up to the players. In conclusion, examine community, there you'll see the infection that is poisoning the MMO world as we know it.
Comments
I agree completely, however in order to not leave the genre entirely I've decided to play each of the new games and enjoy what they offer that I like and not spend so much time bemoaning what I wish they had.
I think there's fun to be found in almost every MMORPG, at least for a month or two. Long term though, probably not much out there.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Yep, you pretty much summed up exactly how I feel about it OP.
But look on the plus side, at least we have cash shops now..
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Agreed. I expected the genre to be towards larger worlds, greater detail, greater immersion, greater scope of things to do and see, greater range of choices you can make for your characters. Clearly it hasn't.
Wrong. Incredibly wrong. I think the problem is the opposite. We expected a lot more after 10+ of the genre being around and are disappointed with how their development has been retarded.
Its not that the genre has moved beyond us, its that it hasnt caught up with our expectations.
Happens to be true? That casual gamers have ruined the genre? That's a fact?
The only 'fact' is that there are people who don't like the current crop off MMO's, and those who do.
Ah, but wouldn't that be the fault of the expectations?
Simply put, no.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
These posts have become more redundant than the games they are criticizing. I remember when forums were a dream environment. Ten years ago I could log into a forum and have positive and productive conversations about the games I was playing. People were truly creative and conversations were open ended and free to go wherever I wanted to take them. Now it's all the same cookie-cutter crap. "Games all suck now because they are WoW clones." These watered down, casual forums are all a bunch of clones of each other. What a joke.
Now for a more serious response. When are people going to realize that 10 years ago there were about 700k people playing mmorpgs total as opposed to today when there are millions? The genre 10 years ago was simply not that appealing, people. If you were one of the few who loved it and loved it small, I feel a bit sorry for what you have to deal with today. You are also in the small minority. When you post threads like this one the people who are all applauding and agreeing with you were likely introduced to the genre because of WoW and because of what this genre has become. The hypocrisy on their part is laughable.
I was pleasantly surprised when I went from Apprentice to full 5 star Elite in under 2 months. I was pleasantly surprised again when I went from Elite to just barely Hardcore in 2 weeks. Apprentice, here I come!
Relax, follow the whole conversation. It only needs to be true for the person who is speaking.
Two things:
The early MMO’s were created by gamers and visionaries
They were really good
The first MMO I ever played was UO. Granted it wasn’t in 3D but it had everything. Housing, taming, mounts, open world – no instances, ships, rare loot, exploration, maps, tradeskills….it had it all. It was far, far from perfect but it had a clear vision and a visionary behind it. This was a true virtual world.
The second MMO I ever played was EQ. Feature wise it was actually a step down from UO but it added a whole bunch of new things. 3D, group dynamics, raiding. It still felt like a virtual world however.
Original SWG is another game that stands out for me. It was actually very close to UO in terms of features and had some great game play elements – crafting to name one. Some UO devs behind this one. I always thought the SWG engine would have been great for a UO2.
Everything after those games has just not held my attention. I never played WoW. I played EQ2 on and off for awhile but was never happy with it. Currently playing RIFT but account is cancelled. Lazy devs have me running the same instances every night chasing plaques for purple gear…in the same dungeons I leveled up in (just with harder mobs now). I cant stand the quest grind, I cant stand the linear scripted dungeons. I want to get lost in some open world dungeon with my buddies and just kill shit for a few hours. MMO’s don’t need a story line. With 1000’s of players we should be able to make our own.
The early games were so grindy, tedious, and devoid of real gameplay that it was pretty obvious why their populations were so small (because they offered nothing to anyone: hardcore or casual gamer.) WW2O in particular I find it odd anyone would stick through, given the amount of excessively tedious non-fun in that game (especially compared with Planetside.)
Fast forward, genuine and varied gameplay is added, the genre explodes. Players like myself stop hopping endlessly between lackluster timesinks and settle on genuinely fun games.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
LOL
ohh man that was a right old laugh that was!
Fast forward, genuine and varied gameplay?! Genuinely fun games?!
Right so you consider logging onto themepark format game and picking up quests A B C and D. A is a pick up, B is a kill quest, C is an escort and D is a drops quest.
You head over to quest hub III and begin completing quests a b c and d. You then grab warfront A and run it once. Then you head into generic instance B2 and run that, generally not saying three words to the people there because alls that matters to 90% of people is getting to that end game where the REAL FUN IS!!!
You arrive at end game in generic themepark MMO and make THE choice, will I grind pvp or will I grind PVE expert/heroics. You have selected to do both! (omg both!) then you grind 3 experts for badges/marks/whatever and a few drops. The after that you grind out 10000 honour/fame/favor ready to make those very important gear purchases.
Fast forward two months!
Your sat on your pile of expert dungeon and pvp gear and then the last door awaits you, raiding! You join raiding guild 20302 and join up 3 times at a week from 6 pm to 11 pm to raid the same raids every time. You do this for 4 months slowly getting the drops you want.
Then there it is, you have the best gear you can get, your king of the castle, three options await you..
A - Run around capital city in circles for 8 months waiting for expansion to do it all over again.
B - Make an alt and do it all over again.
C - Move over to generic Themepark game 2, and do the same damned things over again.
Heck, Ene...you make it sound like theres a crap load of stuff to do in WoW. I wander what everyones been complaining about? Axehilt's common sense seems to have enraged you.
Opinions, expectations, an overly inflated sense of entitlement, and poor community. Those are the symptoms. Find the cause. These games are not the infection. You see, it's rather a revolutionary idea really. If it tastes bad, stop eating it. Supply and demand regulates that which is produced. If there were no demand for such titles that are in existence today, they would not be here. Sounds to me you are a minority in this equation and enjoy that aspect. However Accusing the majority for their demand is, well shameful. I reiterate my point, if you are not happy with the content of current titles, as a minority you need to support products from those companies that supply your demand. If there are none, be proactive instead of reactive and write, email said companies. Invest in these companies if they are publicly traded. There is also the approach of education and then manifesting your "dreams" into a reality.
The mainstream, aka casual gamers, are the ones who enjoy the current trend in MMOs. And yes, they are very much responsible for the state of things.
Over the past decade there has been growing chatter from what was originally nothing more than a fringe subset of gamer that demanded things be made 'easier' and more 'accessible' to them because: a) they didn't like the "grind", b) they didn't have the time, c) things were too hard for them, d) there's not enough "content".
The thing is, these are mostly subjective complaints. The games were too "grindy", "hard", and lacked "content" for them. The rest of the players were happy with the way things were. They enjoyed their games to be complex, involved, and immersive.
What's entirely ironic about the situation is that things are in many ways worse than they were before.
Today's MMOs are arguable more grindy than they were before. Why? Because "content" is designed to require players to jump through hoops for pre-determiend loot drops in one tier of content, just to be able to jump through another set of hoops to get gear for the next... and the next... and the next... all the while their power level is zero-sum, because every time they cap out their gear progression, the next content patch invalidates all of that work so they can grind through the next level of dungeons/raids for the next tier of gear.
As per content, now we have several people complaining that there's too much of it. Quests. Redundant, boring, quests. that's your content, you got what you asked for. So instead of players figuring out on their own how they wanted to play to their characters, all of that is pretty much decided for them by the developer by pushing players into questing. It used to be that quests were a rare thing, they only existed occasionally, and only to tie together epic tasks for players to complete. Completing a quest used to mean something, because quests were long, hard, but also very rewarding.
Today quests are nothing more than a mechanic used to guide players through the game by telling them what to do so they stop complaining that there's 'not enough to do'. Old MMOs didn't lack content at all. They had countless places to explore, enemies to kill, and other things to do. The only difference is that players didn't have quests every step of the way to tell them exactly where to go and what to do. Quests today are an overused mechanic to prod players into actually playing the game, rather than letting players figure out what they want to within the game on their own. A lot of people are starting to notice this, even the casual gamers.
I'll admit, the oldschool MMOs weren't perfect, not by any means. Many suffered from bugs or exploits, and sometimes even from inane or non-sense mechanics. But what made these MMOs enjoyable wasn't just the mechanics, it was the philosophy of design. The oldschool MMOs were designed to be virtual worlds for gamers to play in, together. That's what made them so fun for the 'oldschool' crowd, despite the flaws that were there, because those MMOs had soul.
Today's MMOs are quite contrary to the old design philosophy. They're not about creating fun virtual worlds for people to play together in. They're instead designed to catch the attention of as many people as possible by being as accessible as possible, and they're designed to be repetitive and grindy without appearing that way through use of 'instant gritification' rewards to create what amounts to an advancement treadmill to nowhere.
MMOs going mainstream has killed the heart and soul of MMOs, and that's why they're nothing more than a shadow of their former glory.
I'm of an opposing opinion. I don't blame "casuals" for the state of mmos today. I blame us, the oldschool gamers who led mmos in this direction from the beginning. We are the ones that complained about the time sinks, griefers/gankers, super long camp times, fighting over mobs, etc. It was us that caused the likes of UOs trammel, and SWGs NGE. We like to blame "casual" gamers who have only relatively recently joined "our" community, but mmos were long going in the steamlined, more action based direction already. We sounded the charge.
Now we're realizing it went too far. Devs noticed that when they started to steamline their games their subs increased. New games began to come out that took into account this growing casual population drawn to the faster paced mmos and the old ones, losing their subs, tried to do the same but it was too late.
Oldschoolers started to notice that these new games didn't make them feel special anymore. The day a 12 yr old beat one of them in pvp was the final straw and here we are.
Said it before I'll say it again (mainly because I'm bored)...I'd be happy with an open world form mmo system that allowed for player input. Give me the skeleton of a game and allow me to form the meat myself or play the varied imaginings of the general player population. The themepark model could still exist here as a base but the relative value of a particular character build or acquiring certain gear is based purely on concept as the wider world of portals can make anything possible.
GURPS Online if you will.
Let me worry about balance in my server/world/adventure. I don't have any great desire to flex my epeen with phony accomplishments I simply want to have a fun gaming session with an element of surprise and excitement.
Have a tiered server system for judging player made game worlds/modules. A grading system could be applied by the developer with player input that would translate to Server A where Server B could be freeform try as you will, etc.
A general character survey might determine the power or 'level' of a particular Your character could be loaded with outrageous gear and might be barred from low magic or low gear worlds/adventures for example. Point system or even word of mouth might define your character.
What is really supplied is the server load and base model as well as monitoring/
GM duties where appropriate. The possible problems with this model are limitless as well and it would take years to grow into something that the community ultimately defined.
Meh, dreaming again
True enough.
But they pushed too far toward the opposite end of the spectrum. When a player can log into an mmo for 90 minutes and log out with a new epic item in their inventory, everything that makes the achievement of acquiring that item special is all but drained from the experience. In older games, you knew who the elite players were. The items they wore spoke volumes about their achievements. You knew them by name and reputation. Because reputation meant something to a player. Unlike today, where you can escape a bad rep with a simple name/server change you can pay real cash for.
"Epic" doesn't mean much anymore. And "elite" means even less.
By "elite", do you mean loser who sits in front of his computer for 8 hours per night?
When did "Time Spent Playing" because what matters most? Time is not difficulty. Any achievement you get simply by putting in "time" is absolutely worthless.
But they pushed too far toward the opposite end of the spectrum. When a player can log into an mmo for 90 minutes and log out with a new epic item in their inventory, everything that makes the achievement of acquiring that item special is all but drained from the experience. In older games, you knew who the elite players were. The items they wore spoke volumes about their achievements. You knew them by name and reputation. Because reputation meant something to a player. Unlike today, where you can escape a bad rep with a simple name/server change you can pay real cash for.
"Epic" doesn't mean much anymore. And "elite" means even less.
By "elite", do you mean loser who sits in front of his computer for 8 hours per night?
When did "Time Spent Playing" because what matters most? Time is not difficulty. Any achievement you get simply by putting in "time" is absolutely worthless.
I basically agree with what you said...
but not the way you said it. :P
I've made this comparison before, but while the MMO-games have changed, this concept of cloning and degraded quality for increased quanuity and speed is the focus of an entire decade. My original comparison was for audio, we went from high quality expensive and hard to replicate (vinyl), to cheaper, but still semi-hard to replicate with slightly less quality (tapes) to cheap as dirt, replicated instantly with a press of a button (mp3s) but the quality has suffered greatly. Audio is an easy example, but we did the same thing with all goods (From mom and pop stores, to Value Stores, to Wal-Mart) and MMOs don't seem to be an exception.
"They essentially want to say 'Correlation proves Causation' when it's just not true." - Sovrath
"I understand the frustration that i read often around here from people that come from UO, EQ, AC, SB, etc but we all know that era is over since a while , i guess we lived something good compared to what is experienced today. The very repressive nature of such websites never helped, with ego fueled powertripping moderators to money making gimmicks, those people never helped but make things worst. I hope each and everyone of you can find a happy place to game sooner or later, as i think most hardcore mmo players have been let down by the industry since a while. Until then, have fun folks!"
I come from that era and I have no complaints really. Games and gamers evolve, sometimes not for the best but I have no control over that. I don't need an open sandbox to have fun playing an MMO. It would be nice of course, but I don't wail away the nights wishing the developers would make a game solely for me and my sandbox needs. I consider myself a hardcore MMO player but the key word in that title is player. Not hardcore whiner, not hardcore opiner... I actually PLAY, and I have fun doing it.
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
Lol. loved your reply
IMO the thing "broke" when companies said "well, let's accomodate the single player gamers into our MMO's, that pie is big and we need a piece of it". Then they made the heavy-quest games which can be soloed to cap, When that's path the most players are going to take (soloing being the fastest way to get to cap and get gear etc), you cannot expect that at cap level everything to turn into a nice community with helpful, sharing people, not self-oriented, playing a game together.
In old games, many of us had great time running open dungeons together, camping spawns. Yes it might sound boring in pure gaming terms but we shared stories, talked about this and that, the game was just a "tool", we just "had fun" being there. Everything in the "heavy quest-based" games screams "come on, play alone!!", Even if i make a friend and we start questing together, tomorrow one of us will not be able to play, the one who played is "ahead" 2-3 quest hubs and we go separate paths. Also, the conversation tends to be dull, "how many wolf skins do you still need?", "how many centaurs you still need to kill?"
We've been dreaming the same dream. Sounds like some freakish mind connection. Maybe if we think hard enough we can make it materialize.......
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
I agree partly. However there is a flip side to that coin you're tossing in. Which is all the negative aspects of forced group play. Grouped MMO's do not create a wonderful world of which everyone is happy, "oh look a unicorn". In fact, it creates a drag effect, that slows the progress of game advancement. A strategy implemented by your so loved and cherished companies to make more dollars. The mind set is simple. The longer you play, the more you pay. In the world of MMO's, if I have to tolerate children, wastes of time, bio breaks, mom aggro, spouse aggro, child aggro, or any other down time, I prefer it to be at the end of the game, where it is important to group any way. Given the choice I much rather enjoy the world on my terms with as little headache as possible. I've paid my dues putting up with players and wasting a night/day of game play on poor individuals and bad behavior. Attacking solo-ability will win you nothing. Seeing that the majority approves, and these companies are happy to provide.
The system of forced grouping dies as all things do that are stagnant. Nothing new has come about adding features to evolve that style of game play. I'm not saying forced grouping is terrible. It does have it faults. However today, Grouping or solo-ability does not make a game great. The game does most of that, it's up to the players. In conclusion, examine community, there you'll see the infection that is poisoning the MMO world as we know it.