follow up on my previous thread:

Swiftblade13

As I acknowledged in the first line my last thread was basically a rant.  I didn't spend a lot of time writing it and naturally made some mistakes and went off on odd tangents.   I'm going to address a couple of those mistakes and see if I can focus on teh non-rant part that could potentially become a productive thread.

 

1) I think the reason "all" more recent MMO's are WoW clones is because WoW has more or less perfected those MMO mechanics that actually work fairly well.  Now anyone that builds an MMO has two options, use the same mechanics (generally with less success due to a lower budget and development time), or try to break the mold and use different mechanics that probably don't work very well. 

With a budget like Blizz has any obvious option that works would have already been explored and expanded on in WoW. 

So what we need to do (the MMO community) is try to help create or discover new mechanics that WILL actually work and have not already been put to use.  This is NOT an easy task!  People in this community constantly post about how they think MMO's should work but most of their ideas are impractical or impossible.  Even those ideas that sound good are often doomed to failure once exposed to a community full of people trying to gain the advantage, cheat, and/or take the easy road at the first opportunity. 

 

2) Yes, WoW is "easy" in many respects and has become increasingly full of "hand holding" features... but you can't blame them for catering to the people who put money in their pockets.  I think all the WoW hatred on this site is laughable.  Hate the community, not the game that figured out how best to cater to them. 

WoW provides plenty of challenge in it's end game PvP and raiding content.  If you don't think WoW endgame raiding is difficult you have not done it much.  Many raid boss fights require incredible organization and teamwork and there is always content available that is only achieved by the tiniest fraction of the players. 

In contrast, WoW started off with a "GPS" map that prevents you from getting lost and a quest log that keeps you on track while questing....  they have since added quest markers on the map so you don't have to even skim through the quest text and done many other things to make the game easier.  Low level dungeons that used to be pretty challenging are now a joke.  All this is "almost" acceptable since it is natural for "end game" to become nearly the entire game after an MMO has been around for a while.  Most new players are in a hurry to get to max level and start playing with the folks (often family and friends) who have been playing for a longer period of time.... that being the case it is understandable for the developers to help them attain that goal rather than lose customers due to their frustration stemming from the need to "catch up".

 

3) My comments that you should all "play WoW or quit complaining" were not well thought out.  What I really meant is that there are not currently any truly viable alternatives to a WoW clone.....  if you want to play a game that is truly different than WoW then set yourself to the task of trying to help invent a viable alternative.  Really look at things objectively and think about whether or not your requests or demands are realistic and whether or not they would work.....  I don't think anyone has come up with an alternative that would be very successful yet. 

Obviously there are going to be those who are not just tired of the existing MMO mechanics, but rather dislike the art style or whatever specific to the best currently available MMO's....  for those I truly feel sorry.  I myself would have preferred a WoW alternative that was just as well made but with less hand holding (no maps, no quest log, death penalty etc.) but I also acknowledge that such a game even if just as well made and supported as WoW would make significantly less money simply because most people are lame "path of least resistance" robots.  This fact makes it impossible for such a "hardcore" current model to be able to achieve the same level of polish and quanitity of content as WoW...  because a big part of the WoW recipe is the huge cash flow resulting from it's success.

 

So far only one game that I'm familiar with has successfully come up with a completely different model that works... EVE online.  The MMO type that I see as having potential at this point would be a game using the EVE model but adding twitch combat.  Sadly BP features the twitch combat without the depth of EVE online and JGE failed entirely.