The IP with WOW was useful, but certainly not the only factor. If they'd released an MMORPG that didn't innovate enough, and didn't try to please players, they would've failed just as hard as the majority of companies of the last few years.
Although using "innovate" with Blizzard is always a little tricky. It's like they said, "Hey, look at the rusty spoon market! These guys are making a killing! We should sell spoons. Without rust!" It's not innovation (they're still making spoons), but it certainly advances the genre by leaps and bounds compared to what it was doing before Blizzard arrived (intentionally making games with terrible mechanics; much like rust on a spoon).
It's hard to describe this sort of genre-advancement (I still haven't found an MMORPG with controls/gameplay as smooth as WOW's) without the word 'innovation' ringing eerily true.
You're right, accessibility and player guidance were the actual innovative contributions that Blizzard brought along with WoW. Although whether it's actual innovation can be a bit tricky to determine as you say, some will call it innovative and others will regard it as too little to call it 'real' innovative.
I'd compare it rather with McDonald's. Of course hamburgers and fries existed before McDonald's, but it's the overall concept of smooth delivery and service that made McDonald's as widespread and popular as it became. Sure, 3 Michelin star restaurants might raise their eyebrows towards McDonald's, but that doesn't mean that the whole philosophy and delivery concept isn't well thought out and brilliant in its own right.
Originally posted by Elikal
Unless MMOs really turn around sometime, MMORPGs are dead for me. And NO I don't think story are a replacement for a WORLD. Not in the long shot.
Does this mean that you won't play any of the known upcoming MMO's when they come out, Elikal?
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."
Humm... This is a trucky one as i got started in Meridian 59.. Very quirky little game... And the grandfather of them all Ultima Online... So to compare those two with the modern games that are dubbed "the second gen" is a bit difficult since Ultima Online was about as user unfriendly as it got... FFA PvP, full FFA looting of everything from the mobs, your self and any unsecured house you happend to come across... And trust me you would have to put a gun to my head to get me to go back to that... Nothing like having your perfectly organized reagent pouch stolen because one of your spells bugged out... Or that brilliant set of perfect armor you just made due to a group of people decided that they very much needed what ever you keept in your bags... not matter what it was.
But, from there i drifted in to games like Eve and Star wars galaxies (yes back in the days when you could have 2 and a half proffesion and jedis was a legend.... I was a Image designer/Tailor... it was RP heaven.) And then moved on to games like City of Heroes. Having never actually played EQ or EQ2 nor DAoC i can not say much about them and apart from a small spell in WoW during Vanilla on a friends account i did not come in to WoW until WotLK so i have no frame of reference on that.
But i can say that UO is about as far from a "rolemodel" as it gets for me, if i want pvp action i'l load up a game like APB or do a battleground... I do not like to have my head chopped off and anything that is not part of my anatomy stolen while i do my banking
Was it better "in the old days"... No but it was different and a lot more difficult. Today we have games that offer so much more story and have lightyears better tools to tell that story due to faster and cheaper internet. But yes the ones that aim for the mainstream have become a lot more adapted to that market, just like book/movies/music... After all i rather watch Wanted: weapons of fate to wind down after a day of stress then a silent russian art film... That does not make one or the other "better", and in the same way i much rather listen to Metallica then some experimental grindcore project... See were i am going with this.
So to conclude (or as you young people call it today TL:DR) i think that things today are different from before and more adapted for the mainstream media... If that is good or bad is a matter of personal taste.
I started day 1 with UO and it was something completely new from MUDs and there were alot of suspense and penalty with death/PvP that made it alluring. The sense of community to find griefers were awesome. Now I have tried several times over the past years to go back for nostalgic reasons but never could get myself back into it.
I avoided EQ but played DAoC and again the sense of community and the new concept of PvP it introduced were awesome. I also liked the ability to solo and explore. DF brought upon a new tpye of PvP and exploration that I had not seen previously. I typically liked to solo but I was a GL of a medium sized guild and found it refreshing to be able to work as a team to figure out how to accomplish a task and the sense of reward by accomplishing these tasks as a team. It made me want to help my guildies as well as strangers. Still remember the early days in Mag Mell trying to swim across the water only to fall prey to bears.
I had beta'd and played SWG and I loved it also for the sense of grouping/ever-growing PvP and crafting. Exploration for high grade materials was always a fun endeavor for my wife and myself and trying to get 100+ harvesters out before others did.
I also beta'd and played WoW and I loved it for it's casualness. A good balance of team and solo. By this time, my RL work and family responsibilities have gotten to the point I could not enjoy an MMO because of RL responsibilities and thus hard for me to judge any MMO in all fairness with the early years of MMO. I have beta'd alot of MMOs but nothing since WoW have captured that since of excitement or nostalgia I had since UO/DAoC/SWG/WoW. I did like some MMOs like EQ2, Vanguard, LotR, AoC, Tabula Rasa, etc... but nothing for long. I am hoping that SWTOR will rekindle my early days of SWG and my RL work load will lighten. Use to play DAoC with 8 computers between my wife and myself. Miss those days or my wife would tell me when to shout "GUARD" in town in UO!!!
In summary, the old days of community/team accomplishments, crafting in DAoC/SWG, and balance of team/solo in WoW.
I started out with UO, then AO, then moved to Neocron 1 year later in 2002.
Those 3 MMOs were the best I ever played. Specifically, Neocron, UO, then AO. When WoW came out, it all went to shit. It's only now, in 2011; 8 effing years later, that developers are realising that people actually want the old style, sandbox MMOs.
Started with UO then went to SWG and dabbled in DAoC. When the NGE hit, I checked out WoW and I can honestly say I was refreshed to see polished content. But it also felt hollow and like a poor man's console game.
Thats what I dont get about a lot of these upcoming combat mmos. That type of game has been done to death on consoles. Bringing it into an mmo format doesnt make it innovative. There are so many great ideas in older mmos that could be refined and brought into the next generation. Why focus so heavily on pew pew stabby stab?
To the topic: I began the mmo journey back in UO beta, I ended the mmo journey in LOTRO moria expansion and have since not devoted any significant time to any mmo. I can't speak for anyone else but for me it's not better worse or even the same. The whole genre moved "sideways" in regards to my preferred playstyle. The reason I say "sideways" is due to two issues (for me)
The first issue that turned me away from mmo's is just prior and during WoW's launch I was experiencing what I now know was what we call mmo burnout. I was tired of mob camp grinding; corpse runs; hell levels(EQ); (craft)material grininding ext. WoW initially seemed like a break from all that being a much more linear playstyle painless leveling, easier death penalties; & brainless crafting(imo). I played WoW during my, mmo burnout recovery phase, for about 7-8 months and during that time I formed personal opinions good and bad about the changes WoW inspired.
THE GOOD:
Brought a whole ton of new people into the genre, really stressing the massively in mmo.
Provided a technically sound game environment using several techniques (instances, invisible walls, relatively bug free{in mmo terms] That giuded players through content and managed huge (for the time)server loads withought massive loading screens(just more of them)
Provided a low risk safe harbor with more transparent grinding : burnout sufferer's during recovery period
THE BAD:
Brought a whole ton of new people into the genre, that had hugely varied expectations, that promted developers to cater to a wider audience, usually annoying all concerened
Provided a technically sound game environment that began introducing limiting aspects on playability (invisible walls, gear grinding, no real exploration posibilities, the feel of a smaller world
Provided a low risk safe harbor; that (for me) began to be boring begining another burnout cycle
THE UGLY:
Brought a whole ton of new people into the genre, The WoW community began to devolve socially (imo) with the influx. As people begin burnout phases in WoW, many(imo) bring their dirty laundry to other mmo's
Provided a technically sound game environment that has since become a staple of most new mmo's that publishers and particuarly investors are afraid to move away from in regards to AAA titles
Provided a low risk safe harbor; which has since become the norm in the genre with little variation, see the above
Since WoW's lauch/success dev/pub houses with $, for the most part, have been trying to mirror WoW's success by basically cut & pasting wow into a new graphics engine with relatively minor tweaks/twists to lore, pvp, VO, questing ext. Worlds have also begun to feel much smaller irregardless of their actual digital foot print due to invisible walls less environmet interaction (ie swimming for example) & extensive instancing. Very little reason or drive to explore past the next quest/raid/pvp hub. Social hubs have for the most part ceased to exist, social interaction as a whole has also been on the decline, very few anymore log in just to interact with other people anymore. Most non-juvenile general chat =LFG for this theat the other
Independent dev's are still trying to push envelopes but since they lack the $ to fully flesh out their games/ideas they often faceplant due to lack of funding. Which contributes to the industries apparent belief that anything drastically new is a bad rsik for investment.
So for me mmo's have not developed significanty since early WoW, EVE being the exception that proved the rule. Sure, graphiclly they often look better, play smoother, but for the most part you perform the same actions in one game that you do in another the only difference is the engine and the UI you interact with.
WoW, with its infamous immature community, was considered the easymode ruination of the genre after it came out, so I laugh when I hear about Blizzard ruining the great community through the dungeon finder and removing the challenge through raid nerfs.
It think it's a lot like the old adage "be careful what you wish for". When I first played WoW after spending so much time in EQ I thought, "cool, exclamation points to tell who has quests" "cool, they tell where you where to go and what to kill" "cool, they tell what the reward is ahead of time, and you even get to chose to sometimes""cool, the dungeons are instanced with no camping or competing for mobs"
I quickly learned that all of the things that made EQ harder also made the reward that much more valuable. I also learned that a quest completed in 30 mins or less is not a quest, it's a task and the quests quickly started to feel more like tasks as the game progressed.
So to answer your question, no I didn't feel that way when WoW first came out. What was gained was obvious from the start, as with most things it took awhile to realized what was lost.
This x10
I always thought that MMORPG's post EQ would look like EQ but with more freedoms. Most of what EQ had I thought would stay, but with greater ability to effect the world in a more permanent way (if I can't change the world, what is the purpose of playing a game in a persistant world?), and a more creative approach to classes. I was also wanting to see crafters able to harvest from the world, instead of buying their mats from vendors. DAoC seemed to be a step in the right direction, but I was waiting for more. The original concept of Horizons looked perfect for me, but proved to be to complicated for a low budget indie developer. SWG brought in better (IMO) class design, and harvestable mats, but subtracted the content. Maybe I should have went to UO way back in the day, who knows?
Independent dev's are still trying to push envelopes but since they lack the $ to fully flesh out their games/ideas they often faceplant due to lack of funding. Which contributes to the industries apparent belief that anything drastically new is a bad rsik for investment.
All of your post made complete sense, and I agreed with every bit of it. This bit, however, is my exact opinion of the current MMO world. I do my best to support the indy developers, having bought Mortal, Earthrise, Face of Mankind, Neocron, Xyson etc etc, and although have been satisfied on some occasions, more often than not have been greatly dissapointed.
I love what they've tried to do, and respect it a great deal, but as you rightly say - these things cost a whole lot of money, which is something indy devs don't have much of.
I'd like to believe that other opinion's are valid regarding this topic, but the truth is that MMO's have become collectively worse since the industry began frantically attempting to copy WoW level design and production quality. It's also without necessity to acknowledge that EQ and Ultima Online were in fact years, and years ahead of the curve (literally, no MMO can do the things UO does, 15 years later?) and that the vast majority of producers and developers aren't trying to cash in on the PC audience wanting or even being a different place for game players, with a different state of mind. Rather, they attempt to reproduce what has made social gaming on consoles like the PS3 and 360 so popular by dumbing down their products to lowest common denominator, ultimately giving people who are looking for complex, intricate (some might even call this "hardcore") experiences no place to find them outside of EVE (and EVE is boring as shit, sorry).
So, what I'm trying to say here is that you're unequivocally wrong if you believe MMO's now are the best they've been, and to pour salt in the wound, people like you (who believe this current trend in MMO's is a good thing) are exactly the reason why the MMO genre is becoming boring and stale.
"This is life! We suffer and slave and expire. That's it!" -Bernard Black (Dylan Moran)
I would say the biggest difference between the people who started in uo, ac, eq1, m59, daoc, lok, etc is... they enjoy the sandboxes and NOT being rail roaded into a single progression path. I think that is probably the biggest thing that annoys me in modern games... theme parks are just too limited.
On the other hand, sandboxes as they've been done in the past (swg, uo, etc) are too hands off to gain mass market appeal.
Ok so this is a question to everyone who started with the now 'oldschool' MMORPGs like EQ and Ultima etc.etc, not WoW or Guild Wars, but just 1990-2003.
A lot of people really hate what the MMO market is now, but I was wondering if everyone who played the older MMOs actually felt exactly the same way when WoW and GW and all those types of games came out?
Did you all think 'WoW is way too casual, same with GW and EQ2' compared to EQ1 etc in 2004 and whenever GW came out?
Look, in 2004 (after playing EQ, UO and SWG) I bought 2 games, EQ2 and WoW
I played WoW for 1 month ( I got my hunter to lvl 20) then I quit and played EQ2 for the next 4 years
Games prior WoW were far better in terms of community building.
WoW felt like a single player game to me, that's why I didn't play it again until after 2008
I remember in WOW beta thinking, I can't believe this is a beta. It's so much better than everything I played before. The animation was on another level, the art design for so superior and the control was what it was supposed to be. After a year of DOAC before it, this is what MMOs are supposed to play like. WOW now is not WOW in 2004 though.
UO and EQ were terrible to me. Horrible control. Lousy graphics. And I had a life:) I never could treat a game as a job. It's the reason I stopped DAOC. Too much time just to squeeze out a level. It was crazy killing the same mob 1000X in the same spot. Total waste.
I started with UO, but I was playing EQ with my raid guild at the time WoW launched.
The one thing that I really remember is that there was an expansion to EQ a few months before WoW came out, I want to say it was Gates of Discord or Omens of War. The level cap was increased by five, so I had spent my time in Plane of Fire, kiting the same type of mob for hours each day. Each kill gave about .4% of a level or so, maybe less. Each mob took about a minute to kill, sometimes longer if I messed up and agro'd something else. Added in with the downtime and it took something close to 12 hours of straight grinding to go up one level, and that only got worse with each additional level.
A lot of people have fond memories of these old games, but I distinctly remember wasting over a week of my life kiting the same damn mobs to level, and that was pretty much the fastest experience possible at the time.
So, long story short, WoW was a breath of fresh air. It still is, by comparison. WoW is no sandbox, but not everyone WANTS a sandbox. It does what it does very well, and I have no real hate towards the game. Now the community that it spawned, on the other hand...
So new MMOs are for people like you that didn't know what to do with the freedom of old MMOs.
While you were doing that exciting stuff, I travelled from Ferroth (ogre home land) to the other side of the continent, I forgot the name, it was an island, just to catch some special fish for a mail armor recipie. I had to cross Qeynos through the sewers, because being an evil race the city guards would have killed me. I spent 3 days lost in the sewers, trying to orient myself following a map on a website. I can't really describe the feeling when i swam underwater through a tunel to the other side of the city, to a new sea, and could go on with my adventure.
I have several of these memories, which are just unthinkable in any modern MMO.
Sure, that's exactly what it is.
It isn't that most people look at these games with rose-tinted glasses or anything.
You traveled from Ferrott to the Erolisi Island. That's dandy. I'm happy for you. I'm not even being sarcastic. Your like of exploration and sandbox mechanics obviously entitles you to have a gigantic chip on your shoulder that you can throw at anyone that likes something you don't.
While you were lost in the sewers, I was killing gods. Or god slayers. Or dragons. Or vampire-lizardman-necromancers. While you were going for your armor recipe, I was directing raids comprised of nearly a hundred people in NToV. What you will undoubtably take from that is that "killing gods" and "directing raids" are more important or exciting than what you did, and you would be wrong. The difference here is responsibility to others.
Responsiblity to the other people in my guild precluded me from getting lost in the sewers. I couldn't be Uncle Owen and sit on my porch talking about the good ole' days of being corpse camped by a lich in the Britain graveyard.
I gave my observation of how Everquest was, Metentso - and make no mistake, that is how it was for a lot of people, maybe not you, but a lot of people. If you want to insult me because you're a sandbox lover, that's your business. You'll have to excuse me if I really don't care.
EDIT: I will echo ste2000 in saying this: Games prior WoW were far better in terms of community building.
Everquest has an amazing community. With WoW, EQ2, DDO, LotRO or any other game now you're lucky to find 19 other people that aren't high all the time and can do any form of high end raiding. In Everquest, even towards the end of my time there in 2006, I still had 71 other GOOD people with me. And a server filled with amazing people. You're lucky to find a handful of people in WoW that can walk and breath at the same time.
I'd compare it rather with McDonald's. Of course hamburgers and fries existed before McDonald's, but it's the overall concept of smooth delivery and service that made McDonald's as widespread and popular as it became. Sure, 3 Michelin star restaurants might raise their eyebrows towards McDonald's, but that doesn't mean that the whole philosophy and delivery concept isn't well thought out and brilliant in its own right.
Well the McD's argument always rings false for me, since it insinuates low quality.
It's more like some freak combination of:
high quality gourmet $30 steak burger, with the same service and atmosphere
...with the convenience of McDonalds
...and at the same price ($5) as every other burger place.
Convenience and accessibility obviously don't appeal as much to players who've played a lot of MMORPGs -- and yet even though I see right through those mechanics to the underlying gameplay, WOW still beats out all the other MMORPGs I've tried.
The only reason I don't still play WOW is there's only so many $30 steak burgers you can have before you become tired of them.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
EQ wasn't a sandbox. I think how EQ played in its later years felt differently than how it was in its early years, before Planes of Power. I still think that with the first 2 expansions, Ruins of Kunark and Scars of Velious, EQ was awesome.
An MMORPG can offer all kinds of great gameplay experiences, I agree that the older MMO's offered gameplay experiences of a certain kind that I haven't felt like that in other later MMO's.
Maybe MMO's like WoW and later offered excellent gameplay experiences in the very specific range of gameplay fun it offers. But that doesn't mean that those older MMO's didn't have great gameplay fun of a different kind, and of a variety that you didn't find in later MMO's.
Originally posted by Axehilt
Well the McD's argument always rings false for me, since it insinuates low quality.
Convenience and accessibility obviously don't appeal as much to players who've played a lot of MMORPGs -- and yet even though I see right through those mechanics to the underlying gameplay, WOW still beats out all the other MMORPGs I've tried.
I was referring to the quality of service and delivery that can make a well known product, like hamburgers and fries, make a different experience or total-product.
I think tastes and preferences differ from one gamer to the next, it's like holidays, some people like to hang out on the beach and clubs and resort they're at, some choose to go mountain climbing and deep sea diving while a third person goes backpacking and hiking, and all this could be in the same country. Same with MMO's, some like to do only raiding and battlegrounds and level some alts, others want their MMO to offer more complex crafting and non-combat related gameplay, a third group prefers a large amount of freedom in the choices they can make in skill choice, character builds and ingame activities.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I got bored of WoW within first year, there just wasnt challenge. Wow tubefeeds everything to you, no sense of achievement in that.
Good ol' days" in old games people would actually be jealous of your rare item or two because not everyone would have everything the game has to offer two months from launch
I started with Meridian 59 in 1996. In some ways it was the best game because it more or less started the whole genre, it is the earliest game that invented the holy triad and the UI most games today have. It also invented the "kill 10 rats" quests, or it is the first game I played with them (Yeah, my first ever MMO quest was really to kill 10 rats). The last thing might not be something that give the game points.
Of course better games have released since in other ways, larger games, more fun games and prettier games. But no M59, no EQ, no Wow.
I liked many games during the years and some are still fun today while others havn't aged as well. It is hard to say which game that is overall best, some games did some things best, others did other things.
If MMOs are better or worse today is hard to say, but MMOs in the late 90s were more different from eachother. Most MMOs are a lot closer to eachother today then they were then and that is bad.
Sometimes a great game comes around and give that wonderful feeling that you never played it before, and all those games are great. I can't say a single game that was best. Sadly have there been a while since a game like that released by I have my hopes up for a few games that wll release the next 12 months.
Just saying things were better before isn't fair. Some things were, but not all.
Asheron's Call was the last game I was fully engulfed in. Maybe cause it was my first game, maybe because my char felt like MY CHARACTER, not some cookie cutter character that everyone else was. My choices actually had consequences long term, skill buybacks werent added for a couple years.
Independent dev's are still trying to push envelopes but since they lack the $ to fully flesh out their games/ideas they often faceplant due to lack of funding. Which contributes to the industries apparent belief that anything drastically new is a bad rsik for investment.
All of your post made complete sense, and I agreed with every bit of it. This bit, however, is my exact opinion of the current MMO world. I do my best to support the indy developers, having bought Mortal, Earthrise, Face of Mankind, Neocron, Xyson etc etc, and although have been satisfied on some occasions, more often than not have been greatly dissapointed.
I love what they've tried to do, and respect it a great deal, but as you rightly say - these things cost a whole lot of money, which is something indy devs don't have much of.
Yea I've always been hoping that dev houses would start forming co-ops instead of relying on publishers/investors for cash influx. In most other media the creaters (directors, authors, musicians, artits, ext) have a HUGE impact on the final product. MMo's on the other hand; creativity appears to be limitied to what investors want and will pay for.
UO is my favorite game of all time (before it was ruined/Trammel). I spent years looking for a substatute. I now try to enjoy games for what they are... I am currently playing WoW again and waiting for GW2/Archeage. I don't think I'll ever repeat the experience I had in UO... but I'm also not 14 years old. And I cant play 6-16 hours a day anymore.
The older games were better... but I don't have the time to play older style games anyway... I can't get into Darkfall now because it has a bunch of what I want in a game (its lacking in many ways too) but I just dont have the time to thrive in a game like that anymore.
I started off with DAoC, which I played for a year or two before trying WoW. When I tried WoW, it was with my old DAoC guildmates. We made a new guild, we all got on and made it our new home. Shortly in though, a lot of the guild decided to go with horde instead of alliance. Those of us left tried to carry on, but one by one, people just vanished, and the game just seemed so dull and pointless without those people around, and so it was back to DAoC.
Now, the reason for trying WoW in the first place was due to changes made in DAoC around that time, these being the infamous Trials of Atlantis expansion. I found that going back to DAoC, it was pretty much the same, now rather dated, game, with the same flaws introduced with the ToA expansion. It didn't take long before I started MMO hopping.
Burning Crusade saw me back with WoW, and I decided to hook up with the old DAoC guild members who'd gone over to the horde (I wasn't keen on any of the races horde launched with visually, just didin't appeal, or I'd have tried that sooner). I enjoyed the game suddenly, now I had my old friends again, there was a reason to carry on the game, and I was soon hitting the level cap and getting into raiding.
Now, the point of all of this, the thing that kept me with an MMO wasn't the game itself, but the people I played with. The community made the MMO experience. In the old days of DAoC and the like, the community seemed much stronger. There wasn't so much hand-holding built in to the game, so you had to ask for help on things, and this created more social interaction. Once MMOs started to go with the single player levelling, and then culminated in the automatic dungeon group builders, a lot of that social interaction was lost. The changes to the game aren't the only things to blame though. With the market being opened up to more casual gamers, it also saw a great many more varied personalities, which inevitably caused many more personality clashes.
In my eye, the changes to the games have been partly to blame with losing interest, but it's the changes to the community that have really started to put me off. You can still get lucky, and come across a great community. The thing is that now, it's more likely to be a great guild than a great game.
------------------------------ Currently playing: Rift
former player of: DAoC, Everquest 2, Guild Wars, SWG (pre-NGE), WoW, Warhammer online, LotR:O
Ok so this is a question to everyone who started with the now 'oldschool' MMORPGs like EQ and Ultima etc.etc, not WoW or Guild Wars, but just 1990-2003.
A lot of people really hate what the MMO market is now, but I was wondering if everyone who played the older MMOs actually felt exactly the same way when WoW and GW and all those types of games came out?
Did you all think 'WoW is way too casual, same with GW and EQ2' compared to EQ1 etc in 2004 and whenever GW came out?
Or do the oldschool and vanilla WoW, GW etc. players all agree that back in 2004 and downwards was collectively when MMOs were the best? Or do you think only EQ and Ultima Online were the best MMOs?
It's hard to explain but basically: was Everquest, DAoC and Ultima Online better than World of Warcraft (Vanilla) and Guild Wars (Vanilla) in your opinion, or do you think WoW and GW were the same games but just improved? Or did you think WoW and GW were in fact better than Everquest and Ultima even though you started with Eq and Ultima?
Hopefully you understand what I'm trying to ask.
In regards to WoW: Once I saw a heavily marketed title make a ton of money (based on previoous RPG successes and a monolithic Asian community) I had a feeling that the traditional mmorpg would die. Vanilla WoW had its fun moments, don't get me wrong. I loved that I could compete in pvp as long as I had gear - vs never being able to live long enough in say, Dark Age of Camelot's rvr to have a chance to progress at anything other than a slug's pace.
But WoW made enough money to make people who had ZERO business being in the industry go out and cut and paste titles together with no real content. Races and classes became cosmetic, and even cut and paste themselves between factions, or said hey, let's toss a few races out there and give like 5 classes - i.e., developers got very lazy.
When WoW became a success, everyone jumped on the mmorpg genre wagon and the new goal was not to compete for creativity but to see how little they could offer while trying to maximize profits (of course that NEVER works...and the dying industry that is all but free to play proves this).
Wow taught us that:
instanced BGs where juvenile flag captures = pvp
no need for housing
you can have the same classes on both sides
childish concepts and rewards are ok - coded as humor but in the end only adds to immature popuations
it's ok to create an RP server, and do nothing more than control a few name choices, hence, killing the RP model
So here we sit - and ten years after release I'm back in Dark Age of Camelot so I can get a sense of meaning and purpose to rvr. Yeah my realm rank is crap - but I'd rather die a thousand deaths to a ranger's bow then to some cut and paste werewolf death knight cartoon mess.
I don't think that UO/EQ were by default better than games now.
At the most basic level some things are much better than they used to be. I mean UO around xmas 1997... think about WoW launch lag which at least was database lag and because of the sheer volume of players.
My problem with MMO development is more like...
UO really could have had unlimited possibility. If you followed what it was and fixed things.. you could take the path to offere even more. Even EQ1 in relative terms offered a lot.
MMO's now actually offer far less. I mean really the NGE is the perfect example. Not to start hate on SOE or anything. Its more the fact of taking 32 professions and all the possible cross specing.. then reducing it to certain classes.
Look at WoW and how talent trees changed for the last xpac. Where you are forced to spec entirely into a tree before you can put points else where. The elimination of many talents...
Taking away choice and variety.. because its to "complex".
That's why in my opinion MMO's have gone down hill.
Comments
You're right, accessibility and player guidance were the actual innovative contributions that Blizzard brought along with WoW. Although whether it's actual innovation can be a bit tricky to determine as you say, some will call it innovative and others will regard it as too little to call it 'real' innovative.
I'd compare it rather with McDonald's. Of course hamburgers and fries existed before McDonald's, but it's the overall concept of smooth delivery and service that made McDonald's as widespread and popular as it became. Sure, 3 Michelin star restaurants might raise their eyebrows towards McDonald's, but that doesn't mean that the whole philosophy and delivery concept isn't well thought out and brilliant in its own right.
Does this mean that you won't play any of the known upcoming MMO's when they come out, Elikal?
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I was jaded for sure, even while I played the post-EQ games. Now I'm just bitter. :P
Humm... This is a trucky one as i got started in Meridian 59.. Very quirky little game... And the grandfather of them all Ultima Online... So to compare those two with the modern games that are dubbed "the second gen" is a bit difficult since Ultima Online was about as user unfriendly as it got... FFA PvP, full FFA looting of everything from the mobs, your self and any unsecured house you happend to come across... And trust me you would have to put a gun to my head to get me to go back to that... Nothing like having your perfectly organized reagent pouch stolen because one of your spells bugged out... Or that brilliant set of perfect armor you just made due to a group of people decided that they very much needed what ever you keept in your bags... not matter what it was.
But, from there i drifted in to games like Eve and Star wars galaxies (yes back in the days when you could have 2 and a half proffesion and jedis was a legend.... I was a Image designer/Tailor... it was RP heaven.) And then moved on to games like City of Heroes. Having never actually played EQ or EQ2 nor DAoC i can not say much about them and apart from a small spell in WoW during Vanilla on a friends account i did not come in to WoW until WotLK so i have no frame of reference on that.
But i can say that UO is about as far from a "rolemodel" as it gets for me, if i want pvp action i'l load up a game like APB or do a battleground... I do not like to have my head chopped off and anything that is not part of my anatomy stolen while i do my banking
Was it better "in the old days"... No but it was different and a lot more difficult. Today we have games that offer so much more story and have lightyears better tools to tell that story due to faster and cheaper internet. But yes the ones that aim for the mainstream have become a lot more adapted to that market, just like book/movies/music... After all i rather watch Wanted: weapons of fate to wind down after a day of stress then a silent russian art film... That does not make one or the other "better", and in the same way i much rather listen to Metallica then some experimental grindcore project... See were i am going with this.
So to conclude (or as you young people call it today TL:DR) i think that things today are different from before and more adapted for the mainstream media... If that is good or bad is a matter of personal taste.
This have been a good conversation
I started day 1 with UO and it was something completely new from MUDs and there were alot of suspense and penalty with death/PvP that made it alluring. The sense of community to find griefers were awesome. Now I have tried several times over the past years to go back for nostalgic reasons but never could get myself back into it.
I avoided EQ but played DAoC and again the sense of community and the new concept of PvP it introduced were awesome. I also liked the ability to solo and explore. DF brought upon a new tpye of PvP and exploration that I had not seen previously. I typically liked to solo but I was a GL of a medium sized guild and found it refreshing to be able to work as a team to figure out how to accomplish a task and the sense of reward by accomplishing these tasks as a team. It made me want to help my guildies as well as strangers. Still remember the early days in Mag Mell trying to swim across the water only to fall prey to bears.
I had beta'd and played SWG and I loved it also for the sense of grouping/ever-growing PvP and crafting. Exploration for high grade materials was always a fun endeavor for my wife and myself and trying to get 100+ harvesters out before others did.
I also beta'd and played WoW and I loved it for it's casualness. A good balance of team and solo. By this time, my RL work and family responsibilities have gotten to the point I could not enjoy an MMO because of RL responsibilities and thus hard for me to judge any MMO in all fairness with the early years of MMO. I have beta'd alot of MMOs but nothing since WoW have captured that since of excitement or nostalgia I had since UO/DAoC/SWG/WoW. I did like some MMOs like EQ2, Vanguard, LotR, AoC, Tabula Rasa, etc... but nothing for long. I am hoping that SWTOR will rekindle my early days of SWG and my RL work load will lighten. Use to play DAoC with 8 computers between my wife and myself. Miss those days or my wife would tell me when to shout "GUARD" in town in UO!!!
In summary, the old days of community/team accomplishments, crafting in DAoC/SWG, and balance of team/solo in WoW.
I started out with UO, then AO, then moved to Neocron 1 year later in 2002.
Those 3 MMOs were the best I ever played. Specifically, Neocron, UO, then AO. When WoW came out, it all went to shit. It's only now, in 2011; 8 effing years later, that developers are realising that people actually want the old style, sandbox MMOs.
Started with UO then went to SWG and dabbled in DAoC. When the NGE hit, I checked out WoW and I can honestly say I was refreshed to see polished content. But it also felt hollow and like a poor man's console game.
Thats what I dont get about a lot of these upcoming combat mmos. That type of game has been done to death on consoles. Bringing it into an mmo format doesnt make it innovative. There are so many great ideas in older mmos that could be refined and brought into the next generation. Why focus so heavily on pew pew stabby stab?
To the topic: I began the mmo journey back in UO beta, I ended the mmo journey in LOTRO moria expansion and have since not devoted any significant time to any mmo. I can't speak for anyone else but for me it's not better worse or even the same. The whole genre moved "sideways" in regards to my preferred playstyle. The reason I say "sideways" is due to two issues (for me)
The first issue that turned me away from mmo's is just prior and during WoW's launch I was experiencing what I now know was what we call mmo burnout. I was tired of mob camp grinding; corpse runs; hell levels(EQ); (craft)material grininding ext. WoW initially seemed like a break from all that being a much more linear playstyle painless leveling, easier death penalties; & brainless crafting(imo). I played WoW during my, mmo burnout recovery phase, for about 7-8 months and during that time I formed personal opinions good and bad about the changes WoW inspired.
THE GOOD:
Brought a whole ton of new people into the genre, really stressing the massively in mmo.
Provided a technically sound game environment using several techniques (instances, invisible walls, relatively bug free{in mmo terms] That giuded players through content and managed huge (for the time)server loads withought massive loading screens(just more of them)
Provided a low risk safe harbor with more transparent grinding : burnout sufferer's during recovery period
THE BAD:
Brought a whole ton of new people into the genre, that had hugely varied expectations, that promted developers to cater to a wider audience, usually annoying all concerened
Provided a technically sound game environment that began introducing limiting aspects on playability (invisible walls, gear grinding, no real exploration posibilities, the feel of a smaller world
Provided a low risk safe harbor; that (for me) began to be boring begining another burnout cycle
THE UGLY:
Brought a whole ton of new people into the genre, The WoW community began to devolve socially (imo) with the influx. As people begin burnout phases in WoW, many(imo) bring their dirty laundry to other mmo's
Provided a technically sound game environment that has since become a staple of most new mmo's that publishers and particuarly investors are afraid to move away from in regards to AAA titles
Provided a low risk safe harbor; which has since become the norm in the genre with little variation, see the above
Since WoW's lauch/success dev/pub houses with $, for the most part, have been trying to mirror WoW's success by basically cut & pasting wow into a new graphics engine with relatively minor tweaks/twists to lore, pvp, VO, questing ext. Worlds have also begun to feel much smaller irregardless of their actual digital foot print due to invisible walls less environmet interaction (ie swimming for example) & extensive instancing. Very little reason or drive to explore past the next quest/raid/pvp hub. Social hubs have for the most part ceased to exist, social interaction as a whole has also been on the decline, very few anymore log in just to interact with other people anymore. Most non-juvenile general chat =LFG for this theat the other
Independent dev's are still trying to push envelopes but since they lack the $ to fully flesh out their games/ideas they often faceplant due to lack of funding. Which contributes to the industries apparent belief that anything drastically new is a bad rsik for investment.
So for me mmo's have not developed significanty since early WoW, EVE being the exception that proved the rule. Sure, graphiclly they often look better, play smoother, but for the most part you perform the same actions in one game that you do in another the only difference is the engine and the UI you interact with.
EDIT Yea I know I can't spell; get over it;p
WoW, with its infamous immature community, was considered the easymode ruination of the genre after it came out, so I laugh when I hear about Blizzard ruining the great community through the dungeon finder and removing the challenge through raid nerfs.
This x10
I always thought that MMORPG's post EQ would look like EQ but with more freedoms. Most of what EQ had I thought would stay, but with greater ability to effect the world in a more permanent way (if I can't change the world, what is the purpose of playing a game in a persistant world?), and a more creative approach to classes. I was also wanting to see crafters able to harvest from the world, instead of buying their mats from vendors. DAoC seemed to be a step in the right direction, but I was waiting for more. The original concept of Horizons looked perfect for me, but proved to be to complicated for a low budget indie developer. SWG brought in better (IMO) class design, and harvestable mats, but subtracted the content. Maybe I should have went to UO way back in the day, who knows?
All of your post made complete sense, and I agreed with every bit of it. This bit, however, is my exact opinion of the current MMO world. I do my best to support the indy developers, having bought Mortal, Earthrise, Face of Mankind, Neocron, Xyson etc etc, and although have been satisfied on some occasions, more often than not have been greatly dissapointed.
I love what they've tried to do, and respect it a great deal, but as you rightly say - these things cost a whole lot of money, which is something indy devs don't have much of.
I'd like to believe that other opinion's are valid regarding this topic, but the truth is that MMO's have become collectively worse since the industry began frantically attempting to copy WoW level design and production quality. It's also without necessity to acknowledge that EQ and Ultima Online were in fact years, and years ahead of the curve (literally, no MMO can do the things UO does, 15 years later?) and that the vast majority of producers and developers aren't trying to cash in on the PC audience wanting or even being a different place for game players, with a different state of mind. Rather, they attempt to reproduce what has made social gaming on consoles like the PS3 and 360 so popular by dumbing down their products to lowest common denominator, ultimately giving people who are looking for complex, intricate (some might even call this "hardcore") experiences no place to find them outside of EVE (and EVE is boring as shit, sorry).
So, what I'm trying to say here is that you're unequivocally wrong if you believe MMO's now are the best they've been, and to pour salt in the wound, people like you (who believe this current trend in MMO's is a good thing) are exactly the reason why the MMO genre is becoming boring and stale.
"This is life! We suffer and slave and expire. That's it!" -Bernard Black (Dylan Moran)
I would say the biggest difference between the people who started in uo, ac, eq1, m59, daoc, lok, etc is... they enjoy the sandboxes and NOT being rail roaded into a single progression path. I think that is probably the biggest thing that annoys me in modern games... theme parks are just too limited.
On the other hand, sandboxes as they've been done in the past (swg, uo, etc) are too hands off to gain mass market appeal.
Shadus
Look, in 2004 (after playing EQ, UO and SWG) I bought 2 games, EQ2 and WoW
I played WoW for 1 month ( I got my hunter to lvl 20) then I quit and played EQ2 for the next 4 years
Games prior WoW were far better in terms of community building.
WoW felt like a single player game to me, that's why I didn't play it again until after 2008
UO and EQ were terrible to me. Horrible control. Lousy graphics. And I had a life:) I never could treat a game as a job. It's the reason I stopped DAOC. Too much time just to squeeze out a level. It was crazy killing the same mob 1000X in the same spot. Total waste.
Sure, that's exactly what it is.
It isn't that most people look at these games with rose-tinted glasses or anything.
You traveled from Ferrott to the Erolisi Island. That's dandy. I'm happy for you. I'm not even being sarcastic. Your like of exploration and sandbox mechanics obviously entitles you to have a gigantic chip on your shoulder that you can throw at anyone that likes something you don't.
While you were lost in the sewers, I was killing gods. Or god slayers. Or dragons. Or vampire-lizardman-necromancers. While you were going for your armor recipe, I was directing raids comprised of nearly a hundred people in NToV. What you will undoubtably take from that is that "killing gods" and "directing raids" are more important or exciting than what you did, and you would be wrong. The difference here is responsibility to others.
Responsiblity to the other people in my guild precluded me from getting lost in the sewers. I couldn't be Uncle Owen and sit on my porch talking about the good ole' days of being corpse camped by a lich in the Britain graveyard.
I gave my observation of how Everquest was, Metentso - and make no mistake, that is how it was for a lot of people, maybe not you, but a lot of people. If you want to insult me because you're a sandbox lover, that's your business. You'll have to excuse me if I really don't care.
EDIT: I will echo ste2000 in saying this: Games prior WoW were far better in terms of community building.
Everquest has an amazing community. With WoW, EQ2, DDO, LotRO or any other game now you're lucky to find 19 other people that aren't high all the time and can do any form of high end raiding. In Everquest, even towards the end of my time there in 2006, I still had 71 other GOOD people with me. And a server filled with amazing people. You're lucky to find a handful of people in WoW that can walk and breath at the same time.
Well the McD's argument always rings false for me, since it insinuates low quality.
It's more like some freak combination of:
high quality gourmet $30 steak burger, with the same service and atmosphere
...with the convenience of McDonalds
...and at the same price ($5) as every other burger place.
Convenience and accessibility obviously don't appeal as much to players who've played a lot of MMORPGs -- and yet even though I see right through those mechanics to the underlying gameplay, WOW still beats out all the other MMORPGs I've tried.
The only reason I don't still play WOW is there's only so many $30 steak burgers you can have before you become tired of them.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
EQ wasn't a sandbox. I think how EQ played in its later years felt differently than how it was in its early years, before Planes of Power. I still think that with the first 2 expansions, Ruins of Kunark and Scars of Velious, EQ was awesome.
An MMORPG can offer all kinds of great gameplay experiences, I agree that the older MMO's offered gameplay experiences of a certain kind that I haven't felt like that in other later MMO's.
Maybe MMO's like WoW and later offered excellent gameplay experiences in the very specific range of gameplay fun it offers. But that doesn't mean that those older MMO's didn't have great gameplay fun of a different kind, and of a variety that you didn't find in later MMO's.
I was referring to the quality of service and delivery that can make a well known product, like hamburgers and fries, make a different experience or total-product.
I think tastes and preferences differ from one gamer to the next, it's like holidays, some people like to hang out on the beach and clubs and resort they're at, some choose to go mountain climbing and deep sea diving while a third person goes backpacking and hiking, and all this could be in the same country. Same with MMO's, some like to do only raiding and battlegrounds and level some alts, others want their MMO to offer more complex crafting and non-combat related gameplay, a third group prefers a large amount of freedom in the choices they can make in skill choice, character builds and ingame activities.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I started with UO...played EQ and DAoC too
I got bored of WoW within first year, there just wasnt challenge. Wow tubefeeds everything to you, no sense of achievement in that.
Good ol' days" in old games people would actually be jealous of your rare item or two because not everyone would have everything the game has to offer two months from launch
I started with Meridian 59 in 1996. In some ways it was the best game because it more or less started the whole genre, it is the earliest game that invented the holy triad and the UI most games today have. It also invented the "kill 10 rats" quests, or it is the first game I played with them (Yeah, my first ever MMO quest was really to kill 10 rats). The last thing might not be something that give the game points.
Of course better games have released since in other ways, larger games, more fun games and prettier games. But no M59, no EQ, no Wow.
I liked many games during the years and some are still fun today while others havn't aged as well. It is hard to say which game that is overall best, some games did some things best, others did other things.
If MMOs are better or worse today is hard to say, but MMOs in the late 90s were more different from eachother. Most MMOs are a lot closer to eachother today then they were then and that is bad.
Sometimes a great game comes around and give that wonderful feeling that you never played it before, and all those games are great. I can't say a single game that was best. Sadly have there been a while since a game like that released by I have my hopes up for a few games that wll release the next 12 months.
Just saying things were better before isn't fair. Some things were, but not all.
Asheron's Call was the last game I was fully engulfed in. Maybe cause it was my first game, maybe because my char felt like MY CHARACTER, not some cookie cutter character that everyone else was. My choices actually had consequences long term, skill buybacks werent added for a couple years.
Yea I've always been hoping that dev houses would start forming co-ops instead of relying on publishers/investors for cash influx. In most other media the creaters (directors, authors, musicians, artits, ext) have a HUGE impact on the final product. MMo's on the other hand; creativity appears to be limitied to what investors want and will pay for.
UO is my favorite game of all time (before it was ruined/Trammel). I spent years looking for a substatute. I now try to enjoy games for what they are... I am currently playing WoW again and waiting for GW2/Archeage. I don't think I'll ever repeat the experience I had in UO... but I'm also not 14 years old. And I cant play 6-16 hours a day anymore.
The older games were better... but I don't have the time to play older style games anyway... I can't get into Darkfall now because it has a bunch of what I want in a game (its lacking in many ways too) but I just dont have the time to thrive in a game like that anymore.
Remember Old School Ultima Online
I started off with DAoC, which I played for a year or two before trying WoW. When I tried WoW, it was with my old DAoC guildmates. We made a new guild, we all got on and made it our new home. Shortly in though, a lot of the guild decided to go with horde instead of alliance. Those of us left tried to carry on, but one by one, people just vanished, and the game just seemed so dull and pointless without those people around, and so it was back to DAoC.
Now, the reason for trying WoW in the first place was due to changes made in DAoC around that time, these being the infamous Trials of Atlantis expansion. I found that going back to DAoC, it was pretty much the same, now rather dated, game, with the same flaws introduced with the ToA expansion. It didn't take long before I started MMO hopping.
Burning Crusade saw me back with WoW, and I decided to hook up with the old DAoC guild members who'd gone over to the horde (I wasn't keen on any of the races horde launched with visually, just didin't appeal, or I'd have tried that sooner). I enjoyed the game suddenly, now I had my old friends again, there was a reason to carry on the game, and I was soon hitting the level cap and getting into raiding.
Now, the point of all of this, the thing that kept me with an MMO wasn't the game itself, but the people I played with. The community made the MMO experience. In the old days of DAoC and the like, the community seemed much stronger. There wasn't so much hand-holding built in to the game, so you had to ask for help on things, and this created more social interaction. Once MMOs started to go with the single player levelling, and then culminated in the automatic dungeon group builders, a lot of that social interaction was lost. The changes to the game aren't the only things to blame though. With the market being opened up to more casual gamers, it also saw a great many more varied personalities, which inevitably caused many more personality clashes.
In my eye, the changes to the games have been partly to blame with losing interest, but it's the changes to the community that have really started to put me off. You can still get lucky, and come across a great community. The thing is that now, it's more likely to be a great guild than a great game.
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Currently playing: Rift
former player of: DAoC, Everquest 2, Guild Wars, SWG (pre-NGE), WoW, Warhammer online, LotR:O
In regards to WoW: Once I saw a heavily marketed title make a ton of money (based on previoous RPG successes and a monolithic Asian community) I had a feeling that the traditional mmorpg would die. Vanilla WoW had its fun moments, don't get me wrong. I loved that I could compete in pvp as long as I had gear - vs never being able to live long enough in say, Dark Age of Camelot's rvr to have a chance to progress at anything other than a slug's pace.
But WoW made enough money to make people who had ZERO business being in the industry go out and cut and paste titles together with no real content. Races and classes became cosmetic, and even cut and paste themselves between factions, or said hey, let's toss a few races out there and give like 5 classes - i.e., developers got very lazy.
When WoW became a success, everyone jumped on the mmorpg genre wagon and the new goal was not to compete for creativity but to see how little they could offer while trying to maximize profits (of course that NEVER works...and the dying industry that is all but free to play proves this).
Wow taught us that:
instanced BGs where juvenile flag captures = pvp
no need for housing
you can have the same classes on both sides
childish concepts and rewards are ok - coded as humor but in the end only adds to immature popuations
it's ok to create an RP server, and do nothing more than control a few name choices, hence, killing the RP model
So here we sit - and ten years after release I'm back in Dark Age of Camelot so I can get a sense of meaning and purpose to rvr. Yeah my realm rank is crap - but I'd rather die a thousand deaths to a ranger's bow then to some cut and paste werewolf death knight cartoon mess.
To me the question is not really "the one".
I don't think that UO/EQ were by default better than games now.
At the most basic level some things are much better than they used to be. I mean UO around xmas 1997... think about WoW launch lag which at least was database lag and because of the sheer volume of players.
My problem with MMO development is more like...
UO really could have had unlimited possibility. If you followed what it was and fixed things.. you could take the path to offere even more. Even EQ1 in relative terms offered a lot.
MMO's now actually offer far less. I mean really the NGE is the perfect example. Not to start hate on SOE or anything. Its more the fact of taking 32 professions and all the possible cross specing.. then reducing it to certain classes.
Look at WoW and how talent trees changed for the last xpac. Where you are forced to spec entirely into a tree before you can put points else where. The elimination of many talents...
Taking away choice and variety.. because its to "complex".
That's why in my opinion MMO's have gone down hill.