So while nostalgia can influence one's perception, it doesn't dictate it. It also certainly doesn't make something that was genuinely bad seem amazing years after the fact. The reason why so many people praise the older games is because they were genuinely great in their core design, despite having superficial issues. The issue that many of us have with the newest MMOs is that on a superficial level they seem fine, but their core design is rotten.
The problem is that what you consider to have been great core design to others looked like a rotten core.
To me SWG was a broken game whose core systems were faulty from the start and it was imploding around itself. The sandboxy feel was great, the crafting system had deep potential and player cities were a great concept. Beyond that the game was rotting from the inside.
That's exactly the point.
The older games were not necessarily "genuinely great in their core design". They appealed to certain people, who enjoyed their design, but did not appeal to everyone. Just like games today.
That's pretty much what I've been trying to get across.
I'm tired of 'the other side' claiming that my and others dislike of the current design philosophies of the industry, and praise for the oldschool MMOs, is nothing more than nostalgia. They're using the nostalgia excuse as a way to try to completely invalidate our preference in MMOs, because they can't accept that some people did actually enjoy the older MMOs and many of the design concepts in them that are no longer present in most MMOs today.
I'm not trying to get rid of the mess of themepark MMOs that have consumed the industry. I'd just like to see some new MMOs that take some of the oldschool game concepts and expand upon them in a meaningful way, done by developers that have the resources and experience to do it properly.
The MMO world has become what it is today, because we live in a world, where only one thing matters: money.
We do not create what is best, we create what gives money.
That attitude has turned our world into a garbage dump, full of crap that no one needs.
If you wanna have different MMORPG´s (we all know what kind of games we are talking here about), you have to change the world first, cause the games we have to endure today, are nothing but the natural outcome of a world, which believes in the money-whore.
First change yourself, then change the world, then you will get other games.
silent-jones
Newsflash: Ye Olde MMOs were all created to make money as well. This is not a new development. The "world" has not changed since then.
UO, AC1, etc were all created to make money, just like today's games. They weren't created because the designers were your best friend, or they loved you, or because they had some altruistic concern about making your leisure time truly worthwhile and enjoyable. They wanted your money just as badly as any other developer today.
For me, it's all about choice. Old school mmos really didn't give you a lot of choices as to what to do. For the most part, it was find a mob that offered you the best xp and lowest risk, then kill that mob for days or weeks till you out leveled the mob. The best thing to do was to find a group doing the same thing and kill the mobs faster. That was the socialization we old schoolers miss. Just grinding a mob with a group, chatting about this or that. The action was slow and sedate and gave you time to type.
Nowadays, you log into a game and have to decide am I going to gather resources, craft, quest, pvp, raid, explore, solo, group, etc. The action is fast paced with little to no down time and certainly no time to type during a fight.
Vent allows for a lot of socialization, but many old schoolers resent having to use vent. I certainly don't like it when I'm told I need to log into a vent to participate only to be forced to listen to some idiot sing or eat. Maybe I'm just turning into a crotchety old man.
In the end though, even with mmos having gone too far into the action based direction, I still think we're better off and have more choices then we did before.
Maybe one day a dev will release an mmo that makes us go all glassy eyed and transports us back to the olden days when we were young and naive. But then what would we have to complain about?
So while nostalgia can influence one's perception, it doesn't dictate it. It also certainly doesn't make something that was genuinely bad seem amazing years after the fact. The reason why so many people praise the older games is because they were genuinely great in their core design, despite having superficial issues. The issue that many of us have with the newest MMOs is that on a superficial level they seem fine, but their core design is rotten.
The problem is that what you consider to have been great core design to others looked like a rotten core.
To me SWG was a broken game whose core systems were faulty from the start and it was imploding around itself. The sandboxy feel was great, the crafting system had deep potential and player cities were a great concept. Beyond that the game was rotting from the inside.
SWG was indeed broken and buggy, half the classes were completely unplayable and the bugs used to drive me crazy. But you really talk yourself in a circle as SWG did have an amazing crafting system, a truly unique social system (Cantinas were just amazing) also player cities were simply brilliant. These were not good concepts, they were good game features. Crafting did not have deep potential, it was deep.
Many many people would happily put up with the broken facets of the game to enjoy the world SoE had created, myself included. Ok, the CU was a nightmare, but im talking original release SWG. This is the point, it was a semi-original game with many original features which for many people has never been equalled. Indeed these days, no one seems to even bother.
Expresso gave me a Hearthstone beta key.....I'm so happy
I also feel that mmos have gotten worse as far as immersion goes. Nowadays the model of collection for reward has become pretty much standard which is understandable, its an easy model to reproduce over and over again. But I would like to make a small point to see if anyone else feels relatively the same..... when I played everquest for the first time it was a dream come true and I found it extremely easy to immerse and forget about the outside world. Now that Im a professional in the real world I look back and see that being that immersed was bad for me, most of my friends were in the game and the relationship with my friends on the outside started to wane. I feel that having MMOs with quick collect/reward systems is, on the lowest level, a good thing because you can hop on and off quickly if thats what you are trying to do. But i feel that its the developers job to ensure that this process of collection/reward is as intricately woven into something bigger than yourself as possible to create the illusion of heavy immersion. For $15 a month im expecting a lot more out of these games than is currently given, yah we have graphics and 'quests' but there should be a lot more. If we are paying $15 a month and subscribing in the 1k-100ks they should have a workforce of 100 people constantly writing things into the game from 9-5.. thats their job. In my honest opinion there is absolutely no excuse to have even at least ONE quest in a game, unless its the very first quest you do as a tutorial so you can learn mechanics, that has you kill X of anything just because. For $15 a month I expect to see something different every time I log on, linear progression is such an easy way to do things and so cheap. Even if you have a linear way of progressing as your main way of keeping the game organized.... give me 20 choices when I hit a crossroads... do 20, I dont care if you feel youll scare away potential customers, shoot for 20 different paths to chose at any crossroad and see how your game fairs. You might be surprised. Ewww sorry for the rant.
I also feel that mmos have gotten worse as far as immersion goes. Nowadays the model of collection for reward has become pretty much standard which is understandable, its an easy model to reproduce over and over again. But I would like to make a small point to see if anyone else feels relatively the same..... when I played everquest for the first time it was a dream come true and I found it extremely easy to immerse and forget about the outside world. Now that Im a professional in the real world I look back and see that being that immersed was bad for me, most of my friends were in the game and the relationship with my friends on the outside started to wane. I feel that having MMOs with quick collect/reward systems is, on the lowest level, a good thing because you can hop on and off quickly if thats what you are trying to do. But i feel that its the developers job to ensure that this process of collection/reward is as intricately woven into something bigger than yourself as possible to create the illusion of heavy immersion. For $15 a month im expecting a lot more out of these games than is currently given, yah we have graphics and 'quests' but there should be a lot more. If we are paying $15 a month and subscribing in the 1k-100ks they should have a workforce of 100 people constantly writing things into the game from 9-5.. thats their job. In my honest opinion there is absolutely no excuse to have even at least ONE quest in a game, unless its the very first quest you do as a tutorial so you can learn mechanics, that has you kill X of anything just because. For $15 a month I expect to see something different every time I log on, linear progression is such an easy way to do things and so cheap. Even if you have a linear way of progressing as your main way of keeping the game organized.... give me 20 choices when I hit a crossroads... do 20, I dont care if you feel youll scare away potential customers, shoot for 20 different paths to chose at any crossroad and see how your game fairs. You might be surprised. Ewww sorry for the rant.
Interesting point. There are, however, many players who still play 12 hours or more a day. The cheap model you speak of isn't the deterent to that, personal will power is. Most people have a plethora of more important things to do, but many do not.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Clearly the majority of MMORPG players think MMORPGs got worse in the last 10 years. But who's going to listen to our rants and develope a game with more depth than the shallow crap being released since 2004?
From the poll results , i get reassured. I guess about 150 people out of 200 agree with me. Thanks for the feedback.
Yeah, always nice to know that there's others like yourself, but remember, this site is an odd duck in the MMORPG community, heck, we vote EVE online as the best MMO of the year consistently.
So while we have lots of friends here, we in no way are representative of the 10M or so people who play WOW and the many more who play other games.
Sadly, we remain a niche until the newer generation of gamers finally wearies of the current design and starts demanding more. Strangely, only then are we likely to return to the old ways. Odd isn't it?
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
MMO's are still a young genre. Really most game types are really pretty young. MMO's have crazy potential that hasn't been realized, but believe me one day they will. Cloning, etc. happens in all genres. Movies, Music, FPS Games, RTS Games, RPG Games. Over time people will successfully and unsuccessfully try to be creative.
Believe me though, when everyone is online all the time with powerful enough devices the MMO genre will really start to fulfill some of it's potential. They are still limited by technology via the number of characters on the screen vs. the graphics vs. the lag vs. the combat style, etc. Give it time.
Eventually we will see something as high quality as the Unreal Engine but with full networking support with server, client software that will help smaller companies without 150 million dollar budgets make moves in the genre.
The MMO world has become what it is today, because we live in a world, where only one thing matters: money.
We do not create what is best, we create what gives money.
That attitude has turned our world into a garbage dump, full of crap that no one needs.
If you wanna have different MMORPG´s (we all know what kind of games we are talking here about), you have to change the world first, cause the games we have to endure today, are nothing but the natural outcome of a world, which believes in the money-whore.
First change yourself, then change the world, then you will get other games.
silent-jones
Newsflash: Ye Olde MMOs were all created to make money as well. This is not a new development. The "world" has not changed since then.
UO, AC1, etc were all created to make money, just like today's games. They weren't created because the designers were your best friend, or they loved you, or because they had some altruistic concern about making your leisure time truly worthwhile and enjoyable. They wanted your money just as badly as any other developer today.
Not accurate.
The developement of EQ had a humble goal and the two lead designers were given great freedom to design the world (McQuaid and the other guy forgot his name). The bigshots and top managers of SOE didn't know the potential of this so developers had complete freedom on this. There was no previous business model for online gaming not even UO. EQ invented it all with their business model by a mere coinsidence.
Since EQ became a big success SOE wanted to milk this baby and kicked Verant Studio to take control so they can milk the player base. Guess what happened? ever since Verant was disolved SOE started to ruin the game on every expansion until it became a mutation of what it was and doesn't play like it did before. They didn't stop with EQ but they ruined other games like SWG just to jump the WoW boat.
So, in the beginning EQ was a creation of imagination and think tank because it was a complete new experience with a HUMBLE goal but decent support from SOE. So, your claim that developers want our money, hell yeah they do.. it's a business after all. HOWEVER, they were also passionate about the game McQuaid literally was designing a game that he wanted to play. But NOW everyone wants to design a game that will grab cash in anyway they want. Adding gimmics like Public Events, World Quests, Nonesense just to attract players and sell as much copies of their crappy title as they can. There's no work of passion, visionary, or a game that they want to play.
Now big corporations are taking over with hundreds of emlpoyees. Corporate Communications, Marketing, Sales, PRing, Big Stupid Departments getting involved in game design. It is a real business a capitalist professional money grabbing business. A McDonnald of Games if you say. While before it was your Family Restaurant kind of business.. sure they wanted money but they loved to make the food for you.
Sadly there's at least 50% of people who work in the game don't know the hell they are working for. They are hired mercenaries to do specific tasks and have zero idea of the big picture. You end up with a shallow experience. A lot of outsourced shit was being done by all big companies from animation to voice acting. All these people working on the project dont give a shit. The more of these are working on the project the more awekward the project is going to be.
"UO, AC1, etc were all created to make money, just like today's games. They weren't created because the designers were your best friend, or they loved you, or because they had some altruistic concern about making your leisure time truly worthwhile and enjoyable."
Actually I watched an interview with Richard Garriott a few weeks back where he says they were shocked with the response for UO and were actually expecting to lose money.
SWG was indeed broken and buggy, half the classes were completely unplayable and the bugs used to drive me crazy. But you really talk yourself in a circle as SWG did have an amazing crafting system, a truly unique social system (Cantinas were just amazing) also player cities were simply brilliant. These were not good concepts, they were good game features. Crafting did not have deep potential, it was deep.
Many many people would happily put up with the broken facets of the game to enjoy the world SoE had created, myself included. Ok, the CU was a nightmare, but im talking original release SWG. This is the point, it was a semi-original game with many original features which for many people has never been equalled. Indeed these days, no one seems to even bother.
While quite a lot of MMO gamers might be interested in SWG style of gameplay, in the bigger picture it wasn't that much, SWG was losing 10k subs on a monthly basis.
Apparently what it had wasn't enough to keep players around.
Originally posted by yewsef
Clearly the majority of MMORPG players here on mmorpg.com doing the poll think MMORPGs got worse in the last 10 years. But who's going to listen to our rants and develope a game with more depth than the shallow crap being released since 2004?
Fixed that statement for you. It's no secret that mmorpg.com is home and sort of a last resting place to a lot of disgruntled and jaded MMO gamers, among them a more than proportionate number of sandbox fans them feeling the most slanted with the current MMO scene, so naturally the poll shows a skewed picture.
Personally, I disagree that the MMO genre has become less in the last 10 years. Sure, innovation and evolutionary progress has been less in the past 5-6 years than the years before, but that doesn't mean that the genre stood still.
That the genre has been changing and improving all along shows clearest when looking at combat mechanics like seen in Vindictus or DCUO, rift PvE content in Rift, or looking at what the upcoming MMO's like GW2, SWTOR, TERA, ArcheAge, TSW and Firefall have to offer, or expansions like Incarna for EVE or Dust514.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
SWG was indeed broken and buggy, half the classes were completely unplayable and the bugs used to drive me crazy. But you really talk yourself in a circle as SWG did have an amazing crafting system, a truly unique social system (Cantinas were just amazing) also player cities were simply brilliant. These were not good concepts, they were good game features. Crafting did not have deep potential, it was deep.
Many many people would happily put up with the broken facets of the game to enjoy the world SoE had created, myself included. Ok, the CU was a nightmare, but im talking original release SWG. This is the point, it was a semi-original game with many original features which for many people has never been equalled. Indeed these days, no one seems to even bother.
While quite a lot of MMO gamers might be interested in SWG style of gameplay, in the bigger picture it wasn't that much, SWG was losing 10k subs on a monthly basis.
Apparently what it had wasn't enough to keep players around.
Originally posted by yewsef
Clearly the majority of MMORPG players here on mmorpg.com doing the poll think MMORPGs got worse in the last 10 years. But who's going to listen to our rants and develope a game with more depth than the shallow crap being released since 2004?
Fixed that statement for you. It's no secret that mmorpg.com is home and sort of a last resting place to a lot of disgruntled and jaded MMO gamers, among them a more than proportionate number of sandbox fans them feeling the most slanted with the current MMO scene, so naturally the poll shows a skewed picture.
Personally, I disagree that the MMO genre has become less in the last 10 years. Sure, innovation and evolutionary progress has been less in the past 5-6 years than the years before, but that doesn't mean that the genre stood still.
That the genre has been changing and improving all along shows clearest when looking at combat mechanics like seen in Vindictus or DCUO, rift PvE content in Rift, or looking at what the upcoming MMO's like GW2, SWTOR, TERA, ArcheAge, TSW and Firefall have to offer, or expansions like Incarna for EVE or Dust514.
That all makes sense and I agree with you. But you are talking about the nuts and bolts of the games, the mechanics and the animation. I think that what many players on this site are expressing is that the games no longer have a soul. There is hardly any emotions when playing these games (good or bad) you just trudge along like everyone else. Many feel like the grind has gotten worse, even though most of these companies have done everything in thier power to streamline all the mechanics.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
So while nostalgia can influence one's perception, it doesn't dictate it. It also certainly doesn't make something that was genuinely bad seem amazing years after the fact. The reason why so many people praise the older games is because they were genuinely great in their core design, despite having superficial issues. The issue that many of us have with the newest MMOs is that on a superficial level they seem fine, but their core design is rotten.
The problem is that what you consider to have been great core design to others looked like a rotten core.
To me SWG was a broken game whose core systems were faulty from the start and it was imploding around itself. The sandboxy feel was great, the crafting system had deep potential and player cities were a great concept. Beyond that the game was rotting from the inside.
SWG was indeed broken and buggy, half the classes were completely unplayable and the bugs used to drive me crazy. But you really talk yourself in a circle as SWG did have an amazing crafting system, a truly unique social system (Cantinas were just amazing) also player cities were simply brilliant. These were not good concepts, they were good game features. Crafting did not have deep potential, it was deep.
Many many people would happily put up with the broken facets of the game to enjoy the world SoE had created, myself included. Ok, the CU was a nightmare, but im talking original release SWG. This is the point, it was a semi-original game with many original features which for many people has never been equalled. Indeed these days, no one seems to even bother.
I am refering to SWG's crafting as having 'deep potential' because to get to the actual crafting you had to grind your way through one of the worst and pathetic skill up systems I have seen. I am an obsessing crafter in any MMORPG I play but I got so fed up with what SWG required me to do to skill up that I gave up half way through weaponcrafting. I do not know how others managed to grind through it without Repetetive Strain Injury.
The problem with SWG was that once you stripped the buggy and badly designed parts, you were not left with all that much. I ended up playing cookie-cutter professions because all the ones I was really interested in were too broken to be fun. I stuck around because of my friends but ultimately gave up on the game months before the CU or the NGE. SWG did not offer me the freedom to play how I wanted.
Ultimately I play MMORPGs because they offer me the freedom that single player games do not. Any game or game feature that restricts that freedom is one I do not want to put up with. When I started playing my first MMORPG I could have joined one of two major guilds. One was based on giving its members as much freedom as possible and the other restricted its members in the pursuit of a grand vision. I chose the freedom over vision and have not looked back since.
To me 'old school' games had too much vision and not enough freedom. In contrast WoW offered me enough freedom to keep me interested for years.
That all makes sense and I agree with you. But you are talking about the nuts and bolts of the games, the mechanics and the animation. I think that what many players on this site are expressing is that the games no longer have a soul. There is hardly any emotions when playing these games (good or bad) you just trudge along like everyone else. Many feel like the grind has gotten worse, even though most of these companies have done everything in thier power to streamline all the mechanics.
I think what you're referring to is 'community spirit'.
It's true that the way how these MMO's are designed, the MMO designers of most of the MMO's since WoW's arrival put less focus on community building in the feature design of their MMO's and more focus on solo availability and gameplay than in the MMO's before that time.
I think there were 2 factors that played a role in that 'soul' feeling or community spirit of those earlier MMO's:
1. Everyone was new to the genre, enthusiastic, not yet jaded, but open and willing to help build thriving server communities. So players were due to that more community minded already.
2. MMO's had more features and gameplay design that supported thriving communities.
And maybe it is because the new batches MMO gamers with WoW or later date have been 'breastfed and grown up' with a less community focused gameworld design and solo favored gameplay that MMO communities are less cohesive than they used to be. Hard to tell.
This is speaking in general, of course: I mean, according to the OP, LotrO could be described as a 'watered down casual cloning joke' as well, but imo it certainly had soul and a community spirit, especially on the RP servers. I've noticed that RP servers in general, no matter what MMO, have a more lively community than other servers, which in turn leads - for me - to a more immersive gameplay experience and feeling of a living, breathing world.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
SWG was indeed broken and buggy, half the classes were completely unplayable and the bugs used to drive me crazy. But you really talk yourself in a circle as SWG did have an amazing crafting system, a truly unique social system (Cantinas were just amazing) also player cities were simply brilliant. These were not good concepts, they were good game features. Crafting did not have deep potential, it was deep. Many many people would happily put up with the broken facets of the game to enjoy the world SoE had created, myself included. Ok, the CU was a nightmare, but im talking original release SWG. This is the point, it was a semi-original game with many original features which for many people has never been equalled. Indeed these days, no one seems to even bother.
While quite a lot of MMO gamers might be interested in SWG style of gameplay, in the bigger picture it wasn't that much, SWG was losing 10k subs on a monthly basis. Apparently what it had wasn't enough to keep players around.
SWG suffered from poor post release management on SOE's part. Several bugs and balance issues were never addressed ranging from crafters being able to make equipment and consumables that were far too good, along with several class balancing issues. Credit duping was also rampant shortly before the CU, which really hurt the economy. There were also many players who were unhappy about the Jedi unlocking system and that it, and Jedi mechanics, were constantly being changed every couple months. Additionally there also didn't seem to be much in the way of new content development.
I'm not trying to imply that there weren't players who didn't just get tired of the game and leave. Though, I do feel that a great deal of the players that were leaving, was not because the core design of the game was flawed, but because the game was simply being mismanaged. Anecdotal evidence, but the majority of players I spoke to at the time who were leaving, stated they were doing so because of the bugs, balance issues, exploits, etc not being corrected, and that they otherwise would have stayed if it weren't for these issues not having lingered in the game for so long.
I think that the fact that the CU and then very shortly after an unannounced NGE was dumped on players makes it clearly evident that SOE wasn't managing the game on a professional level, or even had a clear scope or direction for it post release.
Originally posted by MMO.Maverick
Originally posted by yewsef
Clearly the majority of MMORPG players here on mmorpg.com doing the poll think MMORPGs got worse in the last 10 years. But who's going to listen to our rants and develope a game with more depth than the shallow crap being released since 2004?
Fixed that statement for you. It's no secret that mmorpg.com is home and sort of a last resting place to a lot of disgruntled and jaded MMO gamers, among them a more than proportionate number of sandbox fans them feeling the most slanted with the current MMO scene, so naturally the poll shows a skewed picture. Personally, I disagree that the MMO genre has become less in the last 10 years. Sure, innovation and evolutionary progress has been less in the past 5-6 years than the years before, but that doesn't mean that the genre stood still. That the genre has been changing and improving all along shows clearest when looking at combat mechanics like seen in Vindictus or DCUO, rift PvE content in Rift, or looking at what the upcoming MMO's like GW2, SWTOR, TERA, ArcheAge, TSW and Firefall have to offer, or expansions like Incarna for EVE or Dust514.
We've seen progression in some areas, but we've also seen severe regression in other areas. It seems that all of the things that made MMOs feel like virtual worlds are pretty much gone, replaced with mechanics that hand-hold players through "content" along a linear path to a treadmill endgame to nowhere. Fun for some, boring to tears for others.
--edit: I wish the post editor wasn't so terrible for quotes...
I'm not trying to imply that there weren't players who didn't just get tired of the game and leave. Though, I do feel that a great deal of the players that were leaving, was not because the core design of the game was flawed, but because the game was simply being mismanaged. Anecdotal evidence, but the majority of players I spoke to at the time who were leaving, stated they were doing so because of the bugs, balance issues, exploits, etc not being corrected, and that they otherwise would have stayed if it weren't for these issues not having lingered in the game for so long.
The core vision of the game was great but the core design of the game was based on grinds and that was the critical flaw of the game. You wanted to be a combat player, you had to grind a ton of mobs. You wanted to be a crafter, you had to grind a ton of trash items to get the recipes and mastery to do the really cool items. You wanted to be an entertainer, you had to grind moves and instruments. When they decided to put Jedi in the game, they made it the biggest grind in the game and were suprised when players rebelled.
This stupid grind permeated every aspect of the game and was a core design flaw.
As a PnP RPG player I just could not stomach that since it went against everything I thought adventure RPGing was supposed to be.
That all makes sense and I agree with you. But you are talking about the nuts and bolts of the games, the mechanics and the animation. I think that what many players on this site are expressing is that the games no longer have a soul. There is hardly any emotions when playing these games (good or bad) you just trudge along like everyone else. Many feel like the grind has gotten worse, even though most of these companies have done everything in thier power to streamline all the mechanics.
I think what you're referring to is 'community spirit'.
It's true that the way how these MMO's are designed, the MMO designers of most of the MMO's since WoW's arrival put less focus on community building in the feature design of their MMO's and more focus on solo availability and gameplay than in the MMO's before that time.
I think there were 2 factors that played a role in that 'soul' feeling or community spirit of those earlier MMO's:
1. Everyone was new to the genre, enthusiastic, not yet jaded, but open and willing to help build thriving server communities. So players were due to that more community minded already.
2. MMO's had more features and gameplay design that supported thriving communities.
And maybe it is because the new batches MMO gamers with WoW or later date have been 'breastfed and grown up' with a less community focused gameworld design and solo favored gameplay that MMO communities are less cohesive than they used to be. Hard to tell.
This is speaking in general, of course: I mean, according to the OP, LotrO could be described as a 'watered down casual cloning joke' as well, but imo it certainly had soul and a community spirit, especially on the RP servers. I've noticed that RP servers in general, no matter what MMO, have a more lively community than other servers, which in turn leads - for me - to a more immersive gameplay experience and feeling of a living, breathing world.
I would also like to point out that people that inhabited the original games were people from a previous generation that didnt grow up with the internet. The difference being that at that time we grew up taking responsibility for our actions and hadnt grown up hiding behind the anonymity as a shield for our personality and actions.
Anyone else remember that you actually had to work to get along with other people?
I'm not trying to imply that there weren't players who didn't just get tired of the game and leave. Though, I do feel that a great deal of the players that were leaving, was not because the core design of the game was flawed, but because the game was simply being mismanaged. Anecdotal evidence, but the majority of players I spoke to at the time who were leaving, stated they were doing so because of the bugs, balance issues, exploits, etc not being corrected, and that they otherwise would have stayed if it weren't for these issues not having lingered in the game for so long.
The core vision of the game was great but the core design of the game was based on grinds and that was the critical flaw of the game. You wanted to be a combat player, you had to grind a ton of mobs. You wanted to be a crafter, you had to grind a ton of trash items to get the recipes and mastery to do the really cool items. You wanted to be an entertainer, you had to grind moves and instruments. When they decided to put Jedi in the game, they made it the biggest grind in the game and were suprised when players rebelled.
This stupid grind permeated every aspect of the game and was a core design flaw.
As a PnP RPG player I just could not stomach that since it went against everything I thought adventure RPGing was supposed to be.
I can very much understand where you are coming from in your dislike of the system that SWG. However as a PnP gamer myself, I actually feel the opposite way about it. Honestly I much prefer SWG's advancement design (sans Jedi) over the current MMO advancement model in so many MMOs today.
Yes, if you wanted to be good at combat you had to kill a lot of mobs. If you wanted to craft you had to craft a lot of items appropriate to the craftign trade you were working on. Or if you wanted to be an entertainer you had to use your entertainer abilities a lot... But honestly, it made sense.
Take a look at the themepark MMOs today. How does collecting 10 river weeds, or carrying a box of trinkets to some strange hermit with an unhealthy obsession with trinkets teach my character to be a better wizard? Honestly it doesn't, it makes no sense at all that completing nonsense tasks for random NPCs advances your character, let alone counts as an adventure.
So while yes, to be the 'best' at whatever profession in SWG you had to "grind" up the appropriate XP to level that profession. The really that's the exact same for any MMO, you have to 'grind' X, Y, or Z to get to max level. So sure, if you look at the game in terms of the 'getting to max level ASAP' perspective, virtually every single game, not just MMO, in existence is going to look like a grind to you.
For myself however, I played SWG with a different perspective. I didn't feel 'useless' at lower skill levels, because I found my niche in the game world. On my combat characters I made it about exploring or collecting crafting materials, so leveling my combat simply became a byproduct of actually playing the game. Even as lowbie crafter I didn't feel useless. I researched how crafting worked, figured out the material spawns, and worked by way up by making items that were still useful to others and in demand, despite not being a max level crafter. So agai, if you're focusing on the destination, not the journey, then of course you'll get burnt out, this is true of most any MMO.
World of Warcraft sold mediocrity to everyone @ a premium....
And established that kid's parents are a larger sum of wealth, than adult Role Players, who expect premium content. Thus the division of cheap onliine arcade games & premium MMORPG's faded. Blizzard sold glitz as depth and younsters don't understand game technology, so they were sold on the "ease" and mediocrity of WoW.
Since the world was filled with millions of mediocre gamers, WoW florished.
WoW, Conan, Lord of the rings are all sub-par, fast food type games. They should not come with a price of $14+ a month. They should reside in the $4 ~ $9/month bin and let true MMORPG's demanding a premium for their rich & deep content.
"No they are not charity. That is where the whales come in. (I play for free. Whales pays.) Devs get a business. That is how it works."
I remember a guy named Infinity in UO holding back a dozen people at the pass coming out of Brittania. After a while, over 30 people had come to the pass to try and force their way through but Infinity and 2 friends were able to drive them all back into town. MMO's used to involve skill
I remember the player group of Orc's in UO massing and terrorizing the countryside every weekend. People used to play and want to be part of a group and effect the world. Now you can only find this in Eve.
I remember opening a chest in the forest and thinking I would find a bit of gold only to have it explode and I lost everything I was carrying. Games used to have a sense of adventure and you never knew what was gonna happen when you left the city.
I agree that the problem got worse with WoW, not because it was a bad game but because it made publishers and the people with money see that more money could be made from the casual solo-friendly players than the existing harder-core players who welcomed adventure and figuring things out.
"Sean (Murray) saying MP will be in the game is not remotely close to evidence that at the point of purchase people thought there was MP in the game." - SEANMCAD
World of Warcraft sold mediocrity to everyone @ a premium....
And established that kid's parents are a larger sum of wealth, than adult Role Players, who expect premium content. Thus the division of cheap onliine arcade games & premium MMORPG's faded. Blizzard sold glitz as depth and younsters don't understand game technology, so they were sold on the "ease" and mediocrity of WoW.
Since the world was filled with millions of mediocre gamers, WoW florished.
WoW, Conan, Lord of the rings are all sub-par, fast food type games. They should not come with a price of $14+ a month. They should reside in the $4 ~ $9/month bin and let true MMORPG's demanding a premium for their rich & deep content.
Mediocre gamers? WTH?!?! When did gaming become a profession to excel at? IT"S A HOBBY FOR F***s sake! I swear, the elitist attitude of some of you is becoming a joke.
Take a deeeeepppppp look in the mirror, realize gaming is a hobby that is meant to be FUN and that not everyone subscribes to your view of the world. You'll be a better person for it...
Your opinion and I suggest you start your own on-line company. Just don't expect it to make much of a profit...
A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true...
I remember a guy named Infinity in UO holding back a dozen people at the pass coming out of Brittania. After a while, over 30 people had come to the pass to try and force their way through but Infinity and 2 friends were able to drive them all back into town. MMO's used to involve skill
I remember the player group of Orc's in UO massing and terrorizing the countryside every weekend. People used to play and want to be part of a group and effect the world. Now you can only find this in Eve.
I remember opening a chest in the forest and thinking I would find a bit of gold only to have it explode and I lost everything I was carrying. Games used to have a sense of adventure and you never knew what was gonna happen when you left the city.
I agree that the problem got worse with WoW, not because it was a bad game but because it made publishers and the people with money see that more money could be made from the casual solo-friendly players than the existing harder-core players who welcomed adventure and figuring things out.
Ah, the Shadowclan back in the glory days.... when things were "bubosh"
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
I don´t agree with all the Points of the Thread Starter but most points are damn true. I remember back 8 years ago when i started with Lineage where u had actually to play in grps meet ppl get connections for crafting and the world was always dangerous. Fast Forward we have now the carebears who played at that time Jedi Knight Outcast and other action games in the genre and ruining it.
I read some of this but did not continue, because it seems like just so much whining, from both sides. First of all Wow didn't ruin gaming, it just appealed to those who did not like complicated games, people who would not have played other games anyways. I have been playing MMO's for awhile now. I like some and hate others. The opinion on these games is mine. To say one game is crap and another is great is just opinion. What I like - others may not like. To those who cannot find a MMO they like, I am sorry, but perhaps you need to expand your preferences. You are right most games provide ways for players to solo, - oh well. I play LOTRO and they have made it megatons more solable than when it was first released, and yes I miss the old challenges. However, I still have little problem getting a fellowship together to do content when I want to. When they added ftp to it's options they breathed some life into it, they have been adding content, slowly but it is not static. In some ways it is more fun than it used to be. And the reason why I like to solo as much as be in a fellowship is because I have been in many legions of doom. You know where the tank aggros everything in a 4 mile radius and then sulks because the healer could not keep them alive? Or where you have to wait 10 minutes in the middle of a quest because someone has to take the dog out? Or someone just mysteriously drops from the fellowship? And everyone dies. repeatedly because no one knows their roles(soloing only accounts for a little of that).
MMO's are evolving, slowly but what they are evolving to, or towards, is not going to please everyone. I may be wrong but I think hard core loot all PvP games are going the way of the dinosaur. We shall see of course but as one poster wrote - if you like the old games better, play them. Indeed if Shadowbane was still around I would most likely be playing it. For now LOTRO will do.
Comments
That's pretty much what I've been trying to get across.
I'm tired of 'the other side' claiming that my and others dislike of the current design philosophies of the industry, and praise for the oldschool MMOs, is nothing more than nostalgia. They're using the nostalgia excuse as a way to try to completely invalidate our preference in MMOs, because they can't accept that some people did actually enjoy the older MMOs and many of the design concepts in them that are no longer present in most MMOs today.
I'm not trying to get rid of the mess of themepark MMOs that have consumed the industry. I'd just like to see some new MMOs that take some of the oldschool game concepts and expand upon them in a meaningful way, done by developers that have the resources and experience to do it properly.
Newsflash: Ye Olde MMOs were all created to make money as well. This is not a new development. The "world" has not changed since then.
UO, AC1, etc were all created to make money, just like today's games. They weren't created because the designers were your best friend, or they loved you, or because they had some altruistic concern about making your leisure time truly worthwhile and enjoyable. They wanted your money just as badly as any other developer today.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
For me, it's all about choice. Old school mmos really didn't give you a lot of choices as to what to do. For the most part, it was find a mob that offered you the best xp and lowest risk, then kill that mob for days or weeks till you out leveled the mob. The best thing to do was to find a group doing the same thing and kill the mobs faster. That was the socialization we old schoolers miss. Just grinding a mob with a group, chatting about this or that. The action was slow and sedate and gave you time to type.
Nowadays, you log into a game and have to decide am I going to gather resources, craft, quest, pvp, raid, explore, solo, group, etc. The action is fast paced with little to no down time and certainly no time to type during a fight.
Vent allows for a lot of socialization, but many old schoolers resent having to use vent. I certainly don't like it when I'm told I need to log into a vent to participate only to be forced to listen to some idiot sing or eat. Maybe I'm just turning into a crotchety old man.
In the end though, even with mmos having gone too far into the action based direction, I still think we're better off and have more choices then we did before.
Maybe one day a dev will release an mmo that makes us go all glassy eyed and transports us back to the olden days when we were young and naive. But then what would we have to complain about?
SWG was indeed broken and buggy, half the classes were completely unplayable and the bugs used to drive me crazy. But you really talk yourself in a circle as SWG did have an amazing crafting system, a truly unique social system (Cantinas were just amazing) also player cities were simply brilliant. These were not good concepts, they were good game features. Crafting did not have deep potential, it was deep.
Many many people would happily put up with the broken facets of the game to enjoy the world SoE had created, myself included. Ok, the CU was a nightmare, but im talking original release SWG. This is the point, it was a semi-original game with many original features which for many people has never been equalled. Indeed these days, no one seems to even bother.
Expresso gave me a Hearthstone beta key.....I'm so happy
I also feel that mmos have gotten worse as far as immersion goes. Nowadays the model of collection for reward has become pretty much standard which is understandable, its an easy model to reproduce over and over again. But I would like to make a small point to see if anyone else feels relatively the same..... when I played everquest for the first time it was a dream come true and I found it extremely easy to immerse and forget about the outside world. Now that Im a professional in the real world I look back and see that being that immersed was bad for me, most of my friends were in the game and the relationship with my friends on the outside started to wane. I feel that having MMOs with quick collect/reward systems is, on the lowest level, a good thing because you can hop on and off quickly if thats what you are trying to do. But i feel that its the developers job to ensure that this process of collection/reward is as intricately woven into something bigger than yourself as possible to create the illusion of heavy immersion. For $15 a month im expecting a lot more out of these games than is currently given, yah we have graphics and 'quests' but there should be a lot more. If we are paying $15 a month and subscribing in the 1k-100ks they should have a workforce of 100 people constantly writing things into the game from 9-5.. thats their job. In my honest opinion there is absolutely no excuse to have even at least ONE quest in a game, unless its the very first quest you do as a tutorial so you can learn mechanics, that has you kill X of anything just because. For $15 a month I expect to see something different every time I log on, linear progression is such an easy way to do things and so cheap. Even if you have a linear way of progressing as your main way of keeping the game organized.... give me 20 choices when I hit a crossroads... do 20, I dont care if you feel youll scare away potential customers, shoot for 20 different paths to chose at any crossroad and see how your game fairs. You might be surprised. Ewww sorry for the rant.
Interesting point. There are, however, many players who still play 12 hours or more a day. The cheap model you speak of isn't the deterent to that, personal will power is. Most people have a plethora of more important things to do, but many do not.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Clearly the majority of MMORPG players think MMORPGs got worse in the last 10 years. But who's going to listen to our rants and develope a game with more depth than the shallow crap being released since 2004?
Yeah, always nice to know that there's others like yourself, but remember, this site is an odd duck in the MMORPG community, heck, we vote EVE online as the best MMO of the year consistently.
So while we have lots of friends here, we in no way are representative of the 10M or so people who play WOW and the many more who play other games.
Sadly, we remain a niche until the newer generation of gamers finally wearies of the current design and starts demanding more. Strangely, only then are we likely to return to the old ways. Odd isn't it?
"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
MMO's are still a young genre. Really most game types are really pretty young. MMO's have crazy potential that hasn't been realized, but believe me one day they will. Cloning, etc. happens in all genres. Movies, Music, FPS Games, RTS Games, RPG Games. Over time people will successfully and unsuccessfully try to be creative.
Believe me though, when everyone is online all the time with powerful enough devices the MMO genre will really start to fulfill some of it's potential. They are still limited by technology via the number of characters on the screen vs. the graphics vs. the lag vs. the combat style, etc. Give it time.
Eventually we will see something as high quality as the Unreal Engine but with full networking support with server, client software that will help smaller companies without 150 million dollar budgets make moves in the genre.
Not accurate.
The developement of EQ had a humble goal and the two lead designers were given great freedom to design the world (McQuaid and the other guy forgot his name). The bigshots and top managers of SOE didn't know the potential of this so developers had complete freedom on this. There was no previous business model for online gaming not even UO. EQ invented it all with their business model by a mere coinsidence.
Since EQ became a big success SOE wanted to milk this baby and kicked Verant Studio to take control so they can milk the player base. Guess what happened? ever since Verant was disolved SOE started to ruin the game on every expansion until it became a mutation of what it was and doesn't play like it did before. They didn't stop with EQ but they ruined other games like SWG just to jump the WoW boat.
So, in the beginning EQ was a creation of imagination and think tank because it was a complete new experience with a HUMBLE goal but decent support from SOE. So, your claim that developers want our money, hell yeah they do.. it's a business after all. HOWEVER, they were also passionate about the game McQuaid literally was designing a game that he wanted to play. But NOW everyone wants to design a game that will grab cash in anyway they want. Adding gimmics like Public Events, World Quests, Nonesense just to attract players and sell as much copies of their crappy title as they can. There's no work of passion, visionary, or a game that they want to play.
Now big corporations are taking over with hundreds of emlpoyees. Corporate Communications, Marketing, Sales, PRing, Big Stupid Departments getting involved in game design. It is a real business a capitalist professional money grabbing business. A McDonnald of Games if you say. While before it was your Family Restaurant kind of business.. sure they wanted money but they loved to make the food for you.
Sadly there's at least 50% of people who work in the game don't know the hell they are working for. They are hired mercenaries to do specific tasks and have zero idea of the big picture. You end up with a shallow experience. A lot of outsourced shit was being done by all big companies from animation to voice acting. All these people working on the project dont give a shit. The more of these are working on the project the more awekward the project is going to be.
"UO, AC1, etc were all created to make money, just like today's games. They weren't created because the designers were your best friend, or they loved you, or because they had some altruistic concern about making your leisure time truly worthwhile and enjoyable."
Actually I watched an interview with Richard Garriott a few weeks back where he says they were shocked with the response for UO and were actually expecting to lose money.
While quite a lot of MMO gamers might be interested in SWG style of gameplay, in the bigger picture it wasn't that much, SWG was losing 10k subs on a monthly basis.
Apparently what it had wasn't enough to keep players around.
Fixed that statement for you. It's no secret that mmorpg.com is home and sort of a last resting place to a lot of disgruntled and jaded MMO gamers, among them a more than proportionate number of sandbox fans them feeling the most slanted with the current MMO scene, so naturally the poll shows a skewed picture.
Personally, I disagree that the MMO genre has become less in the last 10 years. Sure, innovation and evolutionary progress has been less in the past 5-6 years than the years before, but that doesn't mean that the genre stood still.
That the genre has been changing and improving all along shows clearest when looking at combat mechanics like seen in Vindictus or DCUO, rift PvE content in Rift, or looking at what the upcoming MMO's like GW2, SWTOR, TERA, ArcheAge, TSW and Firefall have to offer, or expansions like Incarna for EVE or Dust514.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
That all makes sense and I agree with you. But you are talking about the nuts and bolts of the games, the mechanics and the animation. I think that what many players on this site are expressing is that the games no longer have a soul. There is hardly any emotions when playing these games (good or bad) you just trudge along like everyone else. Many feel like the grind has gotten worse, even though most of these companies have done everything in thier power to streamline all the mechanics.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
I am refering to SWG's crafting as having 'deep potential' because to get to the actual crafting you had to grind your way through one of the worst and pathetic skill up systems I have seen. I am an obsessing crafter in any MMORPG I play but I got so fed up with what SWG required me to do to skill up that I gave up half way through weaponcrafting. I do not know how others managed to grind through it without Repetetive Strain Injury.
The problem with SWG was that once you stripped the buggy and badly designed parts, you were not left with all that much. I ended up playing cookie-cutter professions because all the ones I was really interested in were too broken to be fun. I stuck around because of my friends but ultimately gave up on the game months before the CU or the NGE. SWG did not offer me the freedom to play how I wanted.
Ultimately I play MMORPGs because they offer me the freedom that single player games do not. Any game or game feature that restricts that freedom is one I do not want to put up with. When I started playing my first MMORPG I could have joined one of two major guilds. One was based on giving its members as much freedom as possible and the other restricted its members in the pursuit of a grand vision. I chose the freedom over vision and have not looked back since.
To me 'old school' games had too much vision and not enough freedom. In contrast WoW offered me enough freedom to keep me interested for years.
I think what you're referring to is 'community spirit'.
It's true that the way how these MMO's are designed, the MMO designers of most of the MMO's since WoW's arrival put less focus on community building in the feature design of their MMO's and more focus on solo availability and gameplay than in the MMO's before that time.
I think there were 2 factors that played a role in that 'soul' feeling or community spirit of those earlier MMO's:
1. Everyone was new to the genre, enthusiastic, not yet jaded, but open and willing to help build thriving server communities. So players were due to that more community minded already.
2. MMO's had more features and gameplay design that supported thriving communities.
And maybe it is because the new batches MMO gamers with WoW or later date have been 'breastfed and grown up' with a less community focused gameworld design and solo favored gameplay that MMO communities are less cohesive than they used to be. Hard to tell.
This is speaking in general, of course: I mean, according to the OP, LotrO could be described as a 'watered down casual cloning joke' as well, but imo it certainly had soul and a community spirit, especially on the RP servers. I've noticed that RP servers in general, no matter what MMO, have a more lively community than other servers, which in turn leads - for me - to a more immersive gameplay experience and feeling of a living, breathing world.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
SWG suffered from poor post release management on SOE's part. Several bugs and balance issues were never addressed ranging from crafters being able to make equipment and consumables that were far too good, along with several class balancing issues. Credit duping was also rampant shortly before the CU, which really hurt the economy. There were also many players who were unhappy about the Jedi unlocking system and that it, and Jedi mechanics, were constantly being changed every couple months. Additionally there also didn't seem to be much in the way of new content development.
I'm not trying to imply that there weren't players who didn't just get tired of the game and leave. Though, I do feel that a great deal of the players that were leaving, was not because the core design of the game was flawed, but because the game was simply being mismanaged. Anecdotal evidence, but the majority of players I spoke to at the time who were leaving, stated they were doing so because of the bugs, balance issues, exploits, etc not being corrected, and that they otherwise would have stayed if it weren't for these issues not having lingered in the game for so long.
I think that the fact that the CU and then very shortly after an unannounced NGE was dumped on players makes it clearly evident that SOE wasn't managing the game on a professional level, or even had a clear scope or direction for it post release.
We've seen progression in some areas, but we've also seen severe regression in other areas. It seems that all of the things that made MMOs feel like virtual worlds are pretty much gone, replaced with mechanics that hand-hold players through "content" along a linear path to a treadmill endgame to nowhere. Fun for some, boring to tears for others.
--edit: I wish the post editor wasn't so terrible for quotes...
The core vision of the game was great but the core design of the game was based on grinds and that was the critical flaw of the game. You wanted to be a combat player, you had to grind a ton of mobs. You wanted to be a crafter, you had to grind a ton of trash items to get the recipes and mastery to do the really cool items. You wanted to be an entertainer, you had to grind moves and instruments. When they decided to put Jedi in the game, they made it the biggest grind in the game and were suprised when players rebelled.
This stupid grind permeated every aspect of the game and was a core design flaw.
As a PnP RPG player I just could not stomach that since it went against everything I thought adventure RPGing was supposed to be.
I would also like to point out that people that inhabited the original games were people from a previous generation that didnt grow up with the internet. The difference being that at that time we grew up taking responsibility for our actions and hadnt grown up hiding behind the anonymity as a shield for our personality and actions.
Anyone else remember that you actually had to work to get along with other people?
I can very much understand where you are coming from in your dislike of the system that SWG. However as a PnP gamer myself, I actually feel the opposite way about it. Honestly I much prefer SWG's advancement design (sans Jedi) over the current MMO advancement model in so many MMOs today.
Yes, if you wanted to be good at combat you had to kill a lot of mobs. If you wanted to craft you had to craft a lot of items appropriate to the craftign trade you were working on. Or if you wanted to be an entertainer you had to use your entertainer abilities a lot... But honestly, it made sense.
Take a look at the themepark MMOs today. How does collecting 10 river weeds, or carrying a box of trinkets to some strange hermit with an unhealthy obsession with trinkets teach my character to be a better wizard? Honestly it doesn't, it makes no sense at all that completing nonsense tasks for random NPCs advances your character, let alone counts as an adventure.
So while yes, to be the 'best' at whatever profession in SWG you had to "grind" up the appropriate XP to level that profession. The really that's the exact same for any MMO, you have to 'grind' X, Y, or Z to get to max level. So sure, if you look at the game in terms of the 'getting to max level ASAP' perspective, virtually every single game, not just MMO, in existence is going to look like a grind to you.
For myself however, I played SWG with a different perspective. I didn't feel 'useless' at lower skill levels, because I found my niche in the game world. On my combat characters I made it about exploring or collecting crafting materials, so leveling my combat simply became a byproduct of actually playing the game. Even as lowbie crafter I didn't feel useless. I researched how crafting worked, figured out the material spawns, and worked by way up by making items that were still useful to others and in demand, despite not being a max level crafter. So agai, if you're focusing on the destination, not the journey, then of course you'll get burnt out, this is true of most any MMO.
World of Warcraft sold mediocrity to everyone @ a premium....
And established that kid's parents are a larger sum of wealth, than adult Role Players, who expect premium content. Thus the division of cheap onliine arcade games & premium MMORPG's faded. Blizzard sold glitz as depth and younsters don't understand game technology, so they were sold on the "ease" and mediocrity of WoW.
Since the world was filled with millions of mediocre gamers, WoW florished.
WoW, Conan, Lord of the rings are all sub-par, fast food type games. They should not come with a price of $14+ a month. They should reside in the $4 ~ $9/month bin and let true MMORPG's demanding a premium for their rich & deep content.
"No they are not charity. That is where the whales come in. (I play for free. Whales pays.) Devs get a business. That is how it works."
-Nariusseldon
I remember a guy named Infinity in UO holding back a dozen people at the pass coming out of Brittania. After a while, over 30 people had come to the pass to try and force their way through but Infinity and 2 friends were able to drive them all back into town. MMO's used to involve skill
I remember the player group of Orc's in UO massing and terrorizing the countryside every weekend. People used to play and want to be part of a group and effect the world. Now you can only find this in Eve.
I remember opening a chest in the forest and thinking I would find a bit of gold only to have it explode and I lost everything I was carrying. Games used to have a sense of adventure and you never knew what was gonna happen when you left the city.
I agree that the problem got worse with WoW, not because it was a bad game but because it made publishers and the people with money see that more money could be made from the casual solo-friendly players than the existing harder-core players who welcomed adventure and figuring things out.
Mediocre gamers? WTH?!?! When did gaming become a profession to excel at? IT"S A HOBBY FOR F***s sake! I swear, the elitist attitude of some of you is becoming a joke.
Take a deeeeepppppp look in the mirror, realize gaming is a hobby that is meant to be FUN and that not everyone subscribes to your view of the world. You'll be a better person for it...
Your opinion and I suggest you start your own on-line company. Just don't expect it to make much of a profit...
A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true...
Ah, the Shadowclan back in the glory days.... when things were "bubosh"
"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
I don´t agree with all the Points of the Thread Starter but most points are damn true. I remember back 8 years ago when i started with Lineage where u had actually to play in grps meet ppl get connections for crafting and the world was always dangerous. Fast Forward we have now the carebears who played at that time Jedi Knight Outcast and other action games in the genre and ruining it.
I read some of this but did not continue, because it seems like just so much whining, from both sides. First of all Wow didn't ruin gaming, it just appealed to those who did not like complicated games, people who would not have played other games anyways. I have been playing MMO's for awhile now. I like some and hate others. The opinion on these games is mine. To say one game is crap and another is great is just opinion. What I like - others may not like. To those who cannot find a MMO they like, I am sorry, but perhaps you need to expand your preferences. You are right most games provide ways for players to solo, - oh well. I play LOTRO and they have made it megatons more solable than when it was first released, and yes I miss the old challenges. However, I still have little problem getting a fellowship together to do content when I want to. When they added ftp to it's options they breathed some life into it, they have been adding content, slowly but it is not static. In some ways it is more fun than it used to be. And the reason why I like to solo as much as be in a fellowship is because I have been in many legions of doom. You know where the tank aggros everything in a 4 mile radius and then sulks because the healer could not keep them alive? Or where you have to wait 10 minutes in the middle of a quest because someone has to take the dog out? Or someone just mysteriously drops from the fellowship? And everyone dies. repeatedly because no one knows their roles(soloing only accounts for a little of that).
MMO's are evolving, slowly but what they are evolving to, or towards, is not going to please everyone. I may be wrong but I think hard core loot all PvP games are going the way of the dinosaur. We shall see of course but as one poster wrote - if you like the old games better, play them. Indeed if Shadowbane was still around I would most likely be playing it. For now LOTRO will do.
Currently bored with MMO's.