(2) wow used to be really hard, but its beend umed down now to where you can reach max leve in about 2 weeks.
The problem is the content in a lot of games used to take a long time to do and reach max level but now days it takes you 2-3 weeks in most games till max level. then all that is left is repeatable raids,pvp.
That is the real problem.
Such an irony!
The so called EZ Mode game is now considered "really hard"!!
MMO developers stopped mass producing worlds in a AAA fashion after wow.
Realy? After WoW?
I never considered WoW a "world" let alone a world one could "live in".
Games where players interact mostly with each other for the game play are more like "worlds". Games where you grab quests do them and run back for more are not.
I would be more than happy to list all the good things wow did but let's not go putting it on a pedestal where it never belonged.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Because all these blogs and forums don't speak for the majority, believe it or not. Few people bother with MMO forums and topics, and I'd be willing to bet only a single-digit percentage actually participate in discussion. I'm part of a community of gamers, and I get scoffed at whenever I mention things happening in MMO forums. I'm usually filled with knowledge on events, upcoming games, etc., stuff that's easy to find on these blogs and forum posts that everyone else is completely obivious to, and wondering where I got the information from.
The average MMOer is too busy playing games to care about what other people have to say about them, so there's a greater majority of gamers' opinions unnaccounted for. Considering how lucrative this 'shallow' generation of games is, it doesn't seem they agree with the OP much.
I also rarely stick with a game for a few months, but I just have a short attention span. I didn't stick with the older games very long either. So I don't think it's just a matter of how newer MMOs are made. I'm sure that's part of it, but I also think people over-glorify the older generation of MMO, sort of that addage 'It's never as pretty as you remember it. While I agree there are far too many WoW clones, I also think the majority of people have just been playing these MMOs too long and are more burnt out than they realize.
Yeah I'll give you that, the average MMORPGer (thanks to WoW) is what I actually communicate with on my daily basis. My non-gaming brother, his children and his wife. My other non-gaming colleagues. These people are not interested in gaming let alone coming to MMORPG forums and post. They are the majority, I'll give you that.
But we're also a target-audience waiting to be won. I think we're about 500,000 players who are disappointed by the current MMORPG direction and probably 50% of us lurk forums and/or post in them. 500k is not a bad number if you ask me. Last time I checked every MMORPG was released post-WoW didn't deliver, some failed.. some even shut down or went free to play. Because the majority of MMORPGers (since they are one of us now... those people who got included in the market because of WoW) never read news or even interested in the genre beyond WoW.
I'm just saying, we're here to be won. Whoever make the choice and I'm betting on CCP's new title.
I disagree with you and "over glorifying" because, my friend, I've thought about this thing for a long... long..long time. Years and years. My opinion is not based on nostalgic rose-colored glasses. What I demand is not the old games to come back (but it's the easiest way to explain in a post.. otherwise I'd have to write a book to explain myself). My problem is specific game mechanics that went POOF. No more. My problem is lack of content compared to older games. My problem is simplification and gamification of the genre. This is not about "pretty" or "nostalgia" this is about game mechanics, features and game design philosophy that we seek.
I'll give you just FEW FEW examples of what I mentioned:
1. Lack of Content: In Rift there are 2 starting zones for each faction.. in EQ there are 13+ starting zones. In Rift there are 6 races, in EQ there were 12 races. In Rift the first dungeon I've played for Guardian faction was at level 17 and up until level 25+ there was nothing but that dungeon. In EQ there are at least 8+ dungeons for level 5-20.
2. Game Features Missing: Faction System of EverQuest, I'm guessing you did play EverQuest so no need to explain what this system could do to the game play.
3. Lots of hand holding, Quests on Rails and insta-gratification.. it's the Farmvile of MMORPGs. The genre was mutated, changed, deformed to suit other audience. It's basically a complete genre.
We're not asking to punish everyone who doesn't agree with us. Hell no.
We're not asking for doom and gloom.
There are plenty of triple A MMORPGs with the same stupid model.. for anyone who doesn't agree with us... just go play any of these games.. it's your golden age! you should be happy and don't worry.. more of that type is coming. It's your lucky day.
As for us.. we'll continue ranting and whining for just one game that does it right.
Not disagreeing, but how do you account for the longevity that WoW has experienced?
total epic addiction. without instance raidiing, WOW is nothing, it's 99.9% of the core they based their game on.
no content, just plain getitng ppl addicted to the grind.
Dealers can't sell harddrugs to kids on the street, yet thos eparents allow them to sit and play every free minute they have getting more addicted by the day.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
I used to contend the Elder Scrolls games see success by taking MMO features and putting them into a developed world that is presented as a single player game.
There is some truth to what you’re saying OP. The worlds games take place in and the lore are too often treated as window dressing for grinding oriented quests in most MMO games anymore. Is it the dev’s fault or the fact that most people can no longer be bothered to read the dialogue?
Where does the blame fall first… The chicken or the egg?
More than anything, it makes me wonder what needs to change in the design concept for games to make world, lore, and story, important again and something players want to indulge.
(2) wow used to be really hard, but its beend umed down now to where you can reach max leve in about 2 weeks.
The problem is the content in a lot of games used to take a long time to do and reach max level but now days it takes you 2-3 weeks in most games till max level. then all that is left is repeatable raids,pvp.
That is the real problem.
Such an irony!
The so called EZ Mode game is now considered "really hard"!!
Just shows you how messed up things are right now
I'm pretty sure I've now gotten my "selective reading" amusement quota for the day in. You even highlighted the words in read but still didn't read them right...
Used To Be
And then BC came along, decided to lower those barriers of entry even more, and HOLY CRAP more people than ever before were playing. Then they did it again going into WOTLK, and again for CATA, and now, a "bad" quarter for them means losing more players than EVE+MO+DFO+FE combined, and still having in excess of 8million+ PAYING subscribers more than the next closest P2P game.
Companies still build worlds to explore, but the most successful of them have wisely decided to remove means of direct content-denial from them.
More people will try and continue to raid when they can go and attempt whenever they get the X people together, and not have to "wait in line" with other guilds, or get the kill stolen, etc etc.
More people will try out structured PvP modes where its designed to be a much more gamey-experience, where they don't have to worry about their stuff being taken.
More people will play games that run on the computer they currently own, and not on the unrealistic bleeding-edge systems that only a small minority own.
The devs have marginalized gameplay styles that just weren't as popular, even in the old days era. UO Trammel happened for a reason, EQ added scaling instanced dungeons in LDON, a games like CoH and E&B both realized early on that taking away experience points on death wasn't actually that fun. They still build worlds, just not ones that ever let anyone "lord" an aspect of the game over other players with total exclusivity.
And the market showed them how right their decision to do that was, and just how many people were actually interested in MMO's as far back as UO-era, but just didn't want to deal with a lot of the petty crap they kept hearing from their friends who did.
But then as soon as something definitively better arrived, they jumped in, and now that one friend who had tried to get people into MMO's in the first place will now be the odd-man-out of his social circle if he doesn't go where all his friends are. "You kept telling us we should try MMO's, well this is the one the majority chose to play."
Lets Push Things Forward
I knew I would live to design games at age 7, issue 5 of Nintendo Power.
Support games with subs when you believe in their potential, even in spite of their flaws.
Like many of the original groundbreakers created this genre, Garriot and Long with UO wanted to create a world to mold "your story" or Brad McQuaid with EQ remember "You are in our World Now " slogan , and you were, it was a dream a vision of love for these guys, a true adventure for them just building it im sure,And Turbine with AC , we were all just blown away by this living World to discover ,explore and die in ..
But in contrast now Sony slogan is "We are in your Wallet Now" and EA has shredded Britannia from Garriots vision for the dollar, And Turbine is now a debunked bride cashier of the item shop for Warner Bros..
Theme park games have a much easier time borkin there Lore, most are not run by artists with a true vision , they are run by the corporate conglmerate that will bend your mothers lore if it will make them a dollar..
Wow did some really smart things. The smartest was to build MULTIPLE starting worlds , People love to play alts but they dont want to do them in the same world they just finished with. SECOND they made their game so it could run on a cheap computer and that right away atracted millions of people, so while you and me may have good computers many people dont. THIRD Wow ran as smooth as silk this is actually part 2 of cheap computers, so when people tried to play Vanguard (a superior game) or AOC or SWG they noticed hitching and lag and said "forget it" and went back to wow. FOURTH they really perfected the leveling and gear systems and raiding, basically theyseemed to know what the public wanted and did it. The rest of the reasons have been discussed here. Multiple worlds I believe is the most important reason because people love to play alts
There have been open world MMORPGS since wow. They failed.
Open world = bugs = fail.
Go play Vanguard if you havent yet. They got rid of the bugs, but its a walking corpse. Pity.
That's not really well thought out at all.
open world does not mean "bugs".
Warhammer had a lot of bugs and it wasn't an open world. Age of Conan? Bugs.
Essentially what you tried to do was say "Vanguard launched with all sort of bugs and issues and it was an open world therefore open world equals bugs".
Not taking into account any of the reason why Vanguard launched the way it did.
Lineage 2 had an open world and wasn't really rife with bugs any more than any other game out there.
Oh wait, maybe you mean all those small indy developers that had very little money and no experience who all wanted open world games so they made them but had a hard time doing it? I imagine if you found all sort of indy developers with very little money and no experience making theme park games then you would change your explanation?
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Apart from War simply didnt have many game stopping bugs on release in terms of its single player content. It failed for me with a lack of significant worth while rvr lake goals at release.
Didnt play Conan.
I only played Lineage 2 for its two weeks open beta (back when open betas were honest about what they were) so cant comment that much apart from I dont remember encountering any bugs.
MMOs no longer build worlds and thats why no one stays more then 3 months.
hehe. Yep. Thread has merit. I can only speak from a westerners perspective on my feeling. Most of what I've experienced, seen, read, or heard about, demonstrates that most westerners are unappreciative of this expansion of mmorpgs turning into heavily instanced, redundant content, single-player or team-based third-person shooters where massively-multiplayer encouragement and largesque community in expansive and open worlds is forgotten.
Without a doubt, WoW is widely popular, with perhaps @ 40% of their subscribershp from the West http://maxcdn.fooyoh.com/files/attach/images/3004/304/656/004/wow_facts.jpg ,but with the newer mmorpg's over the last several years taking on the transients from WoW, EQII, DAoC, etc., there are still millions of dissatisfied mmorpg enthusiasts the leave these WoW-clonish and non-nutritionally entertaining mmorpgs that have been launched since WoW.
But I consider myself, my thought, as one of millions that happens to think that there has been some great progression in the mmorpg market, but that that progression in content, game-play, massively-multiplayer largesque open worldliness, has only been so much, or too little, as to enable me to only enjoy a 2-3 month journey; as is the case with perhaps ~70% of others that have purchased a particular box in the last several years. Again, a generalization, but I find it hard to believe that there are more satisfied mmorpg enthusiasts than dissatisfied mmorpg enthusiasts based on how many origonal box-purchasers have been leaving mmorpgs in the last several years within the 3-6 month post-launch time-period.
So it appears that developers and publishers are more interested in cashing-in on "mmorpg nomads" or "transients" with a hopeful expression of another "spin" on a WoW-type game, with an up-front money-grab for the box based on hype, and with just enough spin on new content and new-car smell to hold 1/3 of the payer-base for a year so they can remain profitable. But to me, most of those games are becoming more and more pve,npc, single-player-esque focused while asking for $15/month for something that resembles a single-player or team-based rpg than a massively-multiplayer, community-centric, open-world, more organic and massively community-involved RPG.
So, then, with more of the current crop of mmorpgs, post-WoW, all that's needed after the first-year is a shallow expansion pumped with hype and gross generalities about new content to continue to string along their meager fan-base, compared to what box-sales origonally were, and keep the servers alive while raking-in that $15/month cash-flow. Even with 250,000 subscribers, that's a healthy $3,750,000 revenue-stream/month to pay expenses, operating costs and saleries for a modest development team.
I'd rather devote more personal entertainment time to a MMO that is more expansive, that is more open for community-centricity with building the world, more large-scale encouraged community-involved than what is out there. However, I havent found one that delivers on that, so I nomadically hop from one new mmorpg to another every 6-months or so.
Originally posted by Larsa Originally posted by ActionMMORPG Not disagreeing, but how do you account for the longevity that WoW has experienced?
I'd guess that the people that play WoW for many years are not the same people that played UO, EQ, DAoC, AC for many years. Then why are there so many people who play wow who talk about all those years they played UO, EQ, DAoC, AC?
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
(2) wow used to be really hard, but its beend umed down now to where you can reach max leve in about 2 weeks.
The problem is the content in a lot of games used to take a long time to do and reach max level but now days it takes you 2-3 weeks in most games till max level. then all that is left is repeatable raids,pvp.
That is the real problem.
Such an irony!
The so called EZ Mode game is now considered "really hard"!!
Just shows you how messed up things are right now
I'm pretty sure I've now gotten my "selective reading" amusement quota for the day in. You even highlighted the words in read but still didn't read them right...
Used To Be
And then BC came along, decided to lower those barriers of entry even more, and HOLY CRAP more people than ever before were playing. Then they did it again going into WOTLK, and again for CATA, and now, a "bad" quarter for them means losing more players than EVE+MO+DFO+FE combined, and still having in excess of 8million+ PAYING subscribers more than the next closest P2P game.
Companies still build worlds to explore, but the most successful of them have wisely decided to remove means of direct content-denial from them.
More people will try and continue to raid when they can go and attempt whenever they get the X people together, and not have to "wait in line" with other guilds, or get the kill stolen, etc etc.
More people will try out structured PvP modes where its designed to be a much more gamey-experience, where they don't have to worry about their stuff being taken.
More people will play games that run on the computer they currently own, and not on the unrealistic bleeding-edge systems that only a small minority own.
The devs have marginalized gameplay styles that just weren't as popular, even in the old days era. UO Trammel happened for a reason, EQ added scaling instanced dungeons in LDON, a games like CoH and E&B both realized early on that taking away experience points on death wasn't actually that fun. They still build worlds, just not ones that ever let anyone "lord" an aspect of the game over other players with total exclusivity.
And the market showed them how right their decision to do that was, and just how many people were actually interested in MMO's as far back as UO-era, but just didn't want to deal with a lot of the petty crap they kept hearing from their friends who did.
But then as soon as something definitively better arrived, they jumped in, and now that one friend who had tried to get people into MMO's in the first place will now be the odd-man-out of his social circle if he doesn't go where all his friends are. "You kept telling us we should try MMO's, well this is the one the majority chose to play."
Errrrr . . .
I think he was alluding to the fact that in comparison to mmo's that came before it, WOW was NEVER hard and always WAS ez-mode. For people to say it is ez-mode NOW becuase it USED to be hard back in Vanilla WOW is why he thinks things are now messed up. They "dumbed down" further something that was "dumb" to begin with.
I suppose selective reading amusement works both ways.
(2) wow used to be really hard, but its beend umed down now to where you can reach max leve in about 2 weeks.
The problem is the content in a lot of games used to take a long time to do and reach max level but now days it takes you 2-3 weeks in most games till max level. then all that is left is repeatable raids,pvp.
That is the real problem.
Such an irony!
The so called EZ Mode game is now considered "really hard"!!
Just shows you how messed up things are right now
I'm pretty sure I've now gotten my "selective reading" amusement quota for the day in. You even highlighted the words in read but still didn't read them right...
Used To Be
And then BC came along, decided to lower those barriers of entry even more, and HOLY CRAP more people than ever before were playing. Then they did it again going into WOTLK, and again for CATA, and now, a "bad" quarter for them means losing more players than EVE+MO+DFO+FE combined, and still having in excess of 8million+ PAYING subscribers more than the next closest P2P game.
Companies still build worlds to explore, but the most successful of them have wisely decided to remove means of direct content-denial from them.
More people will try and continue to raid when they can go and attempt whenever they get the X people together, and not have to "wait in line" with other guilds, or get the kill stolen, etc etc.
More people will try out structured PvP modes where its designed to be a much more gamey-experience, where they don't have to worry about their stuff being taken.
More people will play games that run on the computer they currently own, and not on the unrealistic bleeding-edge systems that only a small minority own.
The devs have marginalized gameplay styles that just weren't as popular, even in the old days era. UO Trammel happened for a reason, EQ added scaling instanced dungeons in LDON, a games like CoH and E&B both realized early on that taking away experience points on death wasn't actually that fun. They still build worlds, just not ones that ever let anyone "lord" an aspect of the game over other players with total exclusivity.
And the market showed them how right their decision to do that was, and just how many people were actually interested in MMO's as far back as UO-era, but just didn't want to deal with a lot of the petty crap they kept hearing from their friends who did.
But then as soon as something definitively better arrived, they jumped in, and now that one friend who had tried to get people into MMO's in the first place will now be the odd-man-out of his social circle if he doesn't go where all his friends are. "You kept telling us we should try MMO's, well this is the one the majority chose to play."
Errrrr . . .
I think he was alluding to the fact that in comparison to mmo's that came before it, WOW was NEVER hard and always WAS ez-mode. For people to say it is ez-mode NOW becuase it USED to be hard back in Vanilla WOW is why he thinks things are now messed up. They "dumbed down" further something that was "dumb" to begin with.
I suppose selective reading amusement works both ways.
im guessing you to didnt read what was posted, ill break it down for you.
poster a says wow used to be really hard.
poster b quotes poster a talking about how its ironic that wow is considered really hard now.
poster a points out that poster b clearly didnt read the post since it said used to be and poster b is talking about now.
poster c (you) starts trying to defend poster b by saying he was talking about the fact that wow was never hard, which isnt what poster b posted at all, which can be seen in the use of now in poster bs post. "
The so called EZ Mode game is now considered "really hard"!!"
present tense there.
Apparently stating the truth in my sig is "trolling" Sig typo fixed thanks to an observant stragen001.
Ok old games. UO, EQ, DAOC, Swg were worlds for people to love in breath in. Ever since wow all we really have is single player games with thousands of people playing in the same enviroment. Once the content is dried up people leave. This has nothing to do with sandbox or themepark. There were both themepark and sandbox worlds. Its just the straight fact MMO developers stopped mass producing worlds in a AAA fashion after wow. If its not a world people can live in breath in how the hell do you plan on retaining them for years straight.
I agree completely.
MMOs based on communities have a longer subscription rate (SoE still survives thanks to the hardcore EQ subscribers)
Problem with those games mentioned above is that they are all games which pre-date WOW, which means before the MMOs became popular.
Today, with a MMO player base exponentially much bigger than 10 years ago, I believe that if some developers would care to make virtual worlds like 10 years ago, those games will have huge success.
Look at the hype Archeage has achieved, based on few details about the game design than anything more solid
A sandbox...........coming from Korea?
Not 2 words that usually are associated with success, yet people are interested in the concept.
Back in this genre's infancy, we only had half a dozen (or less) games to choose from, and anything more than 150,000 subs was considered a smashing success.
Players were also considerably more tolerant of bugs, less-than-optimal server performance, and a general lack of polish.
10+ years later, we have more titles to choose from than can be listed in this post (many of which are even free-to-play). The playerbase has greatly broadened and expanded. And we demand absolute perfection.
A new MMO with less than half a million subs is considered a dismal failure.
People didn't stick with the games of yore because they were brilliantly designed or full of depth. They stuck with them because:
Comments
Such an irony!
The so called EZ Mode game is now considered "really hard"!!
Just shows you how messed up things are right now
Realy? After WoW?
I never considered WoW a "world" let alone a world one could "live in".
Games where players interact mostly with each other for the game play are more like "worlds". Games where you grab quests do them and run back for more are not.
I would be more than happy to list all the good things wow did but let's not go putting it on a pedestal where it never belonged.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Yeah I'll give you that, the average MMORPGer (thanks to WoW) is what I actually communicate with on my daily basis. My non-gaming brother, his children and his wife. My other non-gaming colleagues. These people are not interested in gaming let alone coming to MMORPG forums and post. They are the majority, I'll give you that.
But we're also a target-audience waiting to be won. I think we're about 500,000 players who are disappointed by the current MMORPG direction and probably 50% of us lurk forums and/or post in them. 500k is not a bad number if you ask me. Last time I checked every MMORPG was released post-WoW didn't deliver, some failed.. some even shut down or went free to play. Because the majority of MMORPGers (since they are one of us now... those people who got included in the market because of WoW) never read news or even interested in the genre beyond WoW.
I'm just saying, we're here to be won. Whoever make the choice and I'm betting on CCP's new title.
I disagree with you and "over glorifying" because, my friend, I've thought about this thing for a long... long..long time. Years and years. My opinion is not based on nostalgic rose-colored glasses. What I demand is not the old games to come back (but it's the easiest way to explain in a post.. otherwise I'd have to write a book to explain myself). My problem is specific game mechanics that went POOF. No more. My problem is lack of content compared to older games. My problem is simplification and gamification of the genre. This is not about "pretty" or "nostalgia" this is about game mechanics, features and game design philosophy that we seek.
I'll give you just FEW FEW examples of what I mentioned:
1. Lack of Content: In Rift there are 2 starting zones for each faction.. in EQ there are 13+ starting zones. In Rift there are 6 races, in EQ there were 12 races. In Rift the first dungeon I've played for Guardian faction was at level 17 and up until level 25+ there was nothing but that dungeon. In EQ there are at least 8+ dungeons for level 5-20.
2. Game Features Missing: Faction System of EverQuest, I'm guessing you did play EverQuest so no need to explain what this system could do to the game play.
3. Lots of hand holding, Quests on Rails and insta-gratification.. it's the Farmvile of MMORPGs. The genre was mutated, changed, deformed to suit other audience. It's basically a complete genre.
We're not asking to punish everyone who doesn't agree with us. Hell no.
We're not asking for doom and gloom.
There are plenty of triple A MMORPGs with the same stupid model.. for anyone who doesn't agree with us... just go play any of these games.. it's your golden age! you should be happy and don't worry.. more of that type is coming. It's your lucky day.
As for us.. we'll continue ranting and whining for just one game that does it right.
total epic addiction. without instance raidiing, WOW is nothing, it's 99.9% of the core they based their game on.
no content, just plain getitng ppl addicted to the grind.
Dealers can't sell harddrugs to kids on the street, yet thos eparents allow them to sit and play every free minute they have getting more addicted by the day.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
This thread fails.
There have been open world MMORPGS since wow. They failed.
Open world = bugs = fail.
Go play Vanguard if you havent yet. They got rid of the bugs, but its a walking corpse. Pity.
I used to contend the Elder Scrolls games see success by taking MMO features and putting them into a developed world that is presented as a single player game.
There is some truth to what you’re saying OP. The worlds games take place in and the lore are too often treated as window dressing for grinding oriented quests in most MMO games anymore. Is it the dev’s fault or the fact that most people can no longer be bothered to read the dialogue?
Where does the blame fall first… The chicken or the egg?
More than anything, it makes me wonder what needs to change in the design concept for games to make world, lore, and story, important again and something players want to indulge.
lets see what www.primeonline.com brings to the table : ) they have 11 worlds : ) /planets
I'm pretty sure I've now gotten my "selective reading" amusement quota for the day in. You even highlighted the words in read but still didn't read them right...
Used To Be
And then BC came along, decided to lower those barriers of entry even more, and HOLY CRAP more people than ever before were playing. Then they did it again going into WOTLK, and again for CATA, and now, a "bad" quarter for them means losing more players than EVE+MO+DFO+FE combined, and still having in excess of 8million+ PAYING subscribers more than the next closest P2P game.
Companies still build worlds to explore, but the most successful of them have wisely decided to remove means of direct content-denial from them.
More people will try and continue to raid when they can go and attempt whenever they get the X people together, and not have to "wait in line" with other guilds, or get the kill stolen, etc etc.
More people will try out structured PvP modes where its designed to be a much more gamey-experience, where they don't have to worry about their stuff being taken.
More people will play games that run on the computer they currently own, and not on the unrealistic bleeding-edge systems that only a small minority own.
The devs have marginalized gameplay styles that just weren't as popular, even in the old days era. UO Trammel happened for a reason, EQ added scaling instanced dungeons in LDON, a games like CoH and E&B both realized early on that taking away experience points on death wasn't actually that fun. They still build worlds, just not ones that ever let anyone "lord" an aspect of the game over other players with total exclusivity.
And the market showed them how right their decision to do that was, and just how many people were actually interested in MMO's as far back as UO-era, but just didn't want to deal with a lot of the petty crap they kept hearing from their friends who did.
But then as soon as something definitively better arrived, they jumped in, and now that one friend who had tried to get people into MMO's in the first place will now be the odd-man-out of his social circle if he doesn't go where all his friends are. "You kept telling us we should try MMO's, well this is the one the majority chose to play."
Lets Push Things Forward
I knew I would live to design games at age 7, issue 5 of Nintendo Power.
Support games with subs when you believe in their potential, even in spite of their flaws.
Like many of the original groundbreakers created this genre, Garriot and Long with UO wanted to create a world to mold "your story" or Brad McQuaid with EQ remember "You are in our World Now " slogan , and you were, it was a dream a vision of love for these guys, a true adventure for them just building it im sure,And Turbine with AC , we were all just blown away by this living World to discover ,explore and die in ..
But in contrast now Sony slogan is "We are in your Wallet Now" and EA has shredded Britannia from Garriots vision for the dollar, And Turbine is now a debunked bride cashier of the item shop for Warner Bros..
Theme park games have a much easier time borkin there Lore, most are not run by artists with a true vision , they are run by the corporate conglmerate that will bend your mothers lore if it will make them a dollar..
Wow did some really smart things. The smartest was to build MULTIPLE starting worlds , People love to play alts but they dont want to do them in the same world they just finished with. SECOND they made their game so it could run on a cheap computer and that right away atracted millions of people, so while you and me may have good computers many people dont. THIRD Wow ran as smooth as silk this is actually part 2 of cheap computers, so when people tried to play Vanguard (a superior game) or AOC or SWG they noticed hitching and lag and said "forget it" and went back to wow. FOURTH they really perfected the leveling and gear systems and raiding, basically theyseemed to know what the public wanted and did it. The rest of the reasons have been discussed here. Multiple worlds I believe is the most important reason because people love to play alts
That's not really well thought out at all.
open world does not mean "bugs".
Warhammer had a lot of bugs and it wasn't an open world. Age of Conan? Bugs.
Essentially what you tried to do was say "Vanguard launched with all sort of bugs and issues and it was an open world therefore open world equals bugs".
Not taking into account any of the reason why Vanguard launched the way it did.
Lineage 2 had an open world and wasn't really rife with bugs any more than any other game out there.
Oh wait, maybe you mean all those small indy developers that had very little money and no experience who all wanted open world games so they made them but had a hard time doing it? I imagine if you found all sort of indy developers with very little money and no experience making theme park games then you would change your explanation?
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Apart from War simply didnt have many game stopping bugs on release in terms of its single player content. It failed for me with a lack of significant worth while rvr lake goals at release.
Didnt play Conan.
I only played Lineage 2 for its two weeks open beta (back when open betas were honest about what they were) so cant comment that much apart from I dont remember encountering any bugs.
With VG it was like beta... not open beta.
hehe. Yep. Thread has merit. I can only speak from a westerners perspective on my feeling. Most of what I've experienced, seen, read, or heard about, demonstrates that most westerners are unappreciative of this expansion of mmorpgs turning into heavily instanced, redundant content, single-player or team-based third-person shooters where massively-multiplayer encouragement and largesque community in expansive and open worlds is forgotten.
Without a doubt, WoW is widely popular, with perhaps @ 40% of their subscribershp from the West http://maxcdn.fooyoh.com/files/attach/images/3004/304/656/004/wow_facts.jpg ,but with the newer mmorpg's over the last several years taking on the transients from WoW, EQII, DAoC, etc., there are still millions of dissatisfied mmorpg enthusiasts the leave these WoW-clonish and non-nutritionally entertaining mmorpgs that have been launched since WoW.
But I consider myself, my thought, as one of millions that happens to think that there has been some great progression in the mmorpg market, but that that progression in content, game-play, massively-multiplayer largesque open worldliness, has only been so much, or too little, as to enable me to only enjoy a 2-3 month journey; as is the case with perhaps ~70% of others that have purchased a particular box in the last several years. Again, a generalization, but I find it hard to believe that there are more satisfied mmorpg enthusiasts than dissatisfied mmorpg enthusiasts based on how many origonal box-purchasers have been leaving mmorpgs in the last several years within the 3-6 month post-launch time-period.
So it appears that developers and publishers are more interested in cashing-in on "mmorpg nomads" or "transients" with a hopeful expression of another "spin" on a WoW-type game, with an up-front money-grab for the box based on hype, and with just enough spin on new content and new-car smell to hold 1/3 of the payer-base for a year so they can remain profitable. But to me, most of those games are becoming more and more pve,npc, single-player-esque focused while asking for $15/month for something that resembles a single-player or team-based rpg than a massively-multiplayer, community-centric, open-world, more organic and massively community-involved RPG.
So, then, with more of the current crop of mmorpgs, post-WoW, all that's needed after the first-year is a shallow expansion pumped with hype and gross generalities about new content to continue to string along their meager fan-base, compared to what box-sales origonally were, and keep the servers alive while raking-in that $15/month cash-flow. Even with 250,000 subscribers, that's a healthy $3,750,000 revenue-stream/month to pay expenses, operating costs and saleries for a modest development team.
I'd rather devote more personal entertainment time to a MMO that is more expansive, that is more open for community-centricity with building the world, more large-scale encouraged community-involved than what is out there. However, I havent found one that delivers on that, so I nomadically hop from one new mmorpg to another every 6-months or so.
I hope ArchAge Online and GW2 will be different.
Then why are there so many people who play wow who talk about all those years they played UO, EQ, DAoC, AC?
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
I can certainly attest to the lack of deep world simulation as the cause of my increasing lack of interest in the mmo genre.
Errrrr . . .
I think he was alluding to the fact that in comparison to mmo's that came before it, WOW was NEVER hard and always WAS ez-mode. For people to say it is ez-mode NOW becuase it USED to be hard back in Vanilla WOW is why he thinks things are now messed up. They "dumbed down" further something that was "dumb" to begin with.
I suppose selective reading amusement works both ways.
im guessing you to didnt read what was posted, ill break it down for you.
poster a says wow used to be really hard.
poster b quotes poster a talking about how its ironic that wow is considered really hard now.
poster a points out that poster b clearly didnt read the post since it said used to be and poster b is talking about now.
poster c (you) starts trying to defend poster b by saying he was talking about the fact that wow was never hard, which isnt what poster b posted at all, which can be seen in the use of now in poster bs post. "
The so called EZ Mode game is now considered "really hard"!!"
present tense there.
Apparently stating the truth in my sig is "trolling"
Sig typo fixed thanks to an observant stragen001.
I agree completely.
MMOs based on communities have a longer subscription rate (SoE still survives thanks to the hardcore EQ subscribers)
Problem with those games mentioned above is that they are all games which pre-date WOW, which means before the MMOs became popular.
Today, with a MMO player base exponentially much bigger than 10 years ago, I believe that if some developers would care to make virtual worlds like 10 years ago, those games will have huge success.
Look at the hype Archeage has achieved, based on few details about the game design than anything more solid
A sandbox...........coming from Korea?
Not 2 words that usually are associated with success, yet people are interested in the concept.
Dumb comparison and conclusion.
Back in this genre's infancy, we only had half a dozen (or less) games to choose from, and anything more than 150,000 subs was considered a smashing success.
Players were also considerably more tolerant of bugs, less-than-optimal server performance, and a general lack of polish.
10+ years later, we have more titles to choose from than can be listed in this post (many of which are even free-to-play). The playerbase has greatly broadened and expanded. And we demand absolute perfection.
A new MMO with less than half a million subs is considered a dismal failure.
People didn't stick with the games of yore because they were brilliantly designed or full of depth. They stuck with them because:
It was a niche audience.
They didn't have much of a bloody choice.