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Just me or are MMO game company getting lazier and lazier
sanshi44
Member UncommonPosts: 1,187
Lets take a look back to the 1990s games im going to use Everquest as the example ehre since it the earlier game im most familiar with. Everquest was rich in lore, intresting quests + a unique epic quest for each class, the world size was 5-10 times larger than curren MMO (Everquest had over 200 zones (area at the release of the game, EQ had 12 races and 13 unique classes on release of the game and more all with muiltipal factions.
2004 WoW release reasonable amount of lore alot less than what everquest had, Wow had 41 zones + 29 instance + 3 raids on release 73 total(Although no load time between areas now appart from instance), quests are all the same but kill something different or go to another quest hub, 8 races 9 classes with 2 factions one per side.
2011 Rift release - not very much lore, 11 zones + 10 instances and 1 raid zones which is 22 total(No load between zones still appart from instances), quest are the same thing over and over with the occasion unique one, 6 races, 4 main classes although that can pick between 8 pve skill and 1 pvp tree however alot of the skill are douplacits or similar to eachother so in my option there only realy 4 classes in this game, of course some people will argue with me there, There are however some dynarmic even rifts and invasion but there poorly done and basicly the same thing repeated several times and changed slightly.
To sum up game developers have reduced the amount of core material in MMO and upgraded the graphics which is sad because graphics do not make the game.
Comments
Start small and then expand on it. Helps in quality control and polish or..start like Vanguard, huge and then fall flat on face.
Everquest started huge and still going tody fairly strong, Vanguard made the rookie mistake of releasing the game before it is finished and fell flat on its face which is another thing that seem to be happing alot more nowadays. WoW hasnt realy expanded to much over the time period they have had what are they up to 3 expansin over 7 years that offerent like 7-12 odd zones + 8 or so instances, Everquest has had 18 in 12 years most of them adding twice the amount of content that WoW expansions have.
Yea its kind of obvious that they have.
But a few upcoming titles seem to be better (i keep my hopes up)
Rift was no more polished than WoW though. where WoW had server queues and traffic related crashes, RIFT had open world events with crashes and glitches on top of glitches on top of glitches and a PVP ranking exploit that to my knowledge still hasn't been fixed.
Just you.
"I don't give a sh*t what other people say. I play what I like and I'll pay to do it too!" - SerialMMOist
Can't compare the development cost of today with days of EQ. That is probably the reason why companies these days don't want to start too big.
All we can say is from late December onwards, things are looking up.
Hang in there and play console games until then. Get a Gamefly sub for under $20 and play the crap out of games like BF3, GoW3, Batman: Arkham City, Dark Souls, etc...
You'll get more entertainment value for your dollar than the current crop of "grind your eyeballs out" mmos released this year.
"TO MICHAEL!"
Im sure EQ cost more than you think because it was the first of it kind in the MMO market first game that was 3d and the first game of its scale, Blizzard is not a cheap company its pulling in major cash from its other game titles, Rift i can understand on why its small.
on another note WoW making alot of money from monthly fee yet it doesnt push out very much content for the time span they have between expansions. To me blizzard seem to be a money hogging comapany spend the bare minimum to keep there customers happy.
Currently im playing BF3 beta and then prob Guildwars 2 it appear to be a good game and there 2-3 more game 2-3 years off that im hoping will be better one being Everquest 3 since it spose to resemble Everquest 1 alot more but its prob 2years or so off so it be awhile.
The amount of work to produce high poly richly detailed environments has shifted priorities in development. I don't see it as lazy, but rather meeting consumer expectations.
If there's any flaw in modern design is that too much emphasis is placed on making a "pretty" game instead of one that's fun.
Its actually the same trend that is happening in almost all the game genres. And there are a couple reasons behind that trend.
1) As graphic improves and funds are spent improving it, the amount of story and materials for gamers to explore decreases.
2) Developers are finding it harder to create content that hasn't been done before, or will be perceived as seen it done that mentality.
3) With the recession, gamers don't have as much funds to buy all the new games thats coming out, therefore they need something that they can justify their spendings. And getting something that is beautiful with half the story content than something that is last generation but with twice the content.
4) With the production costs of games of this generation getting so high, developers must choose which to improve and which to neglect.
I do blame it on the new trend of DLC. Because of this new DLC trend, developers can separate a perfectly good game with tons of content into multiple chapters. But I just don't know if this is a good trend...
Life is a Maze, so make sure you bring your GPS incase you get lost in it.
hard to say imo. I think MMO developer's are more and more confused. Trying to collaborate the MMO idea of a vast world with an awesome society, mixed with lots of play styles, intense PvP, crisp graphics. Think about this too, EQ, AC, Lineage, Vangaurd. The MMO Socity was small, not so vast, less people less KIDS to appeal to. Now you have MMO's that have prospects to being a multi million dollar company. Instead of creating a focus at start, I think they are trying to hard to be "the next big thing" or "lets show we are better than WoW". They need to go into it like, "let's create this world, and do it like this because we think it will be fun and we want to", instead of "WoW, WoW, WoW". What with CoH, LoTRO, DC going F2P, players are also getting good MMO choices, which makes it even that much more difficult to get a flowing society.
MMO's need mass people in order to be a real MMO. If there aren't enough players, they have to dub it down to make it easier, soloable, faster leveling. Now you have a watered down MMO, I don't blame them, you have to, or else evERyone will leave. So what do you do? You have a monster that is WoW, you have insane Hype for one MMO. You have another competator going F2P, how do you stand out? As much as I dislike WoW these days, I wish it could be the only MMO, if all "MMO's" except one or two would just go away, the player base would be so amazing.
Then you have the players who all have a different Idea of what makes a great MMO. good PvP, crafting, leveling system, dungeon system, class's, race's. Personally, I think all else asside, you need an insane player base, end of story. that is what makes it a Massively Multi Player Online. simply having the potential of being Massively Multiplyer isn't enough anymore, it would seem....
There are far too many variables to consider to just assume it has something to do with either devs being lazy or even the current trend into DLC (which really is no different than the trend of constant expansions ushered in by EQ). I would also imagine you could point to a few games out around the same time that suffered from a lack of content when compared to a game like EQ
One consideration is like it or not there are far more casual players interested in mmorpg's now and how many times have you read even the hardcores on mmorpg. proclaim they don't care about questing quest text yada yada yada.
I think another big factor to consider is money does every developer have the funds to actually develop games as content rich as WOW or EQ at launch? To my understanding when it was made WOW was far and away the most expensive mmorpg ever made.
Hopefully with deep pocket companies like ANet and BW working on games that we should see very soon maybe the trend you point to will change.
I hate DLC, god how I Loathe it
I'm not sure they are lazier, but it sure look as they are.
Why? honestly i don't have a clue, i wish i could tell too.
Old games also needed some attention on graphic. I guess you would need some data and a good analysis, and see how much they spend money and human resource on this aspect back then and now. But i'm pretty confident the % is the same since UO, maybe even went down, 3D tools and software are bombastic now.
They have bigger teams, more money, better tools, even more time is it? really i wish i knew. The only "explanation" i have is that at that time coding was an open area and people though they would be able to do everything with it, coders were dreamers. Now they are stuffed, and probably lost into annoying details without importance for the big picture. When i remember the list of attempt and feature R.G put in Uo, and what they pull now you just want to face palm.
Rift was far more polished then WoW was at launch. Rift didn't crash after an hour of playimte, wether it was server or client. And they weren't all traffic related. WoW was borderline unplayable for almost a month.
Rift's world event crashes were forgivable because there was no way to test how much strain it was going to be unless a lot of people went on the test server. and instead of delaying it a week, they fixed the problem that day.
Well population realy come down to the number of servers the bigger games have 20 or so servers which there population in spread over if they could increase the amount of population they could have on 1 server at a time they wouldnt need as many servers and the population will be higher, if there was only 1 MMO there will just be more servers with the same amount of people on as there always was. If they went back to zones like EQ had you would be able to have more players on 1 server i would assume however the community seem to always want seemless world well atleast thats what game dev seem to think however i dont realy mind either way i personaly would rather have more population on 1 server than having a seemless world.
More money goes onto graphic that trying to increase the amount of players that can be on one server at a time, Its realy a choice between high graphic lower population with a seemless world or high population and a zone based game with reasonable grapgics (Although if they used zones there no reason why they would be able to use the best graphic they have at the time if they had the money to use them, servers hardware cost may be higher though but i cant say for sure since im not a game developer.
Beware the company that says (or you expect) that it will add this, add that, just give them time. And money. Because next thing you know, alot of time has passed, you forking out a bunch of money during this period, and very little has been added by the developers.
Start small? For a Themepark, that is disastrous, you know? Players pump through those quests and zones very fast, especially if regularly grouped with friends and guildmates. The game is designed to funnel players a very specific direction just to progress, so it's no wonder why creative, dedicated players blaze through themepark content. You start small, then next thing you know most of your customers are sitting at level cap / "End Game," bored, with nothing to do, and they can start kissing them goodbye before expansion packs and / or content patches are done. I've seen many times players talking about being already at "End Game" and getting bored very fast after a game's release. I'm not talking about the players who live, breathe, eat MMORPG, I'm talking about a bunch of players sitting at the end of the game way before the developers realized they could get there.
The even bigger beauty for a half-a**ed release with players hitting cap fast is that the end of the game really, really looks half-baked.
So... you can try to do alot and not get it all done properly, or you can do an obviously short-changed, half-a**ed release. Pick your poison.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
I blame it on money, and greed, bottom line is that a current mmo can take hundreds of millions to make, you have to ask yourself why that is, and the only answer I can come up with is that people are greedy bastards.
I mean lets face it, mmo or big developers are the footballers or sports stars of the gaming world, their given way to bloody much money for their work. its disgraceful.
If any developer, lets say blizzard, were to pay their staff minimum or at least average wages, and then give them a bonus at the end, possibly a % of profits, they would have been able to make wow for a fraction of the costs.
But that would have meant the employee's seeing past their own greed and taking a smaller wage packet until the project was complete, and lets face it, no one in their right mind is going to take a smaller pay packet when they can earn more.
the world revolves around greed, its a sad sad truth.
You're overstating the problems with WoW at launch. I was there during beta, open beta and launch. The problems at launch were MOSTLY due to server load and very little to do with bugs in the code causing crashes. WoW, for the amount of subs it started with, was a pretty smoth release relative to alot of other game release dates.
Remember Burning Crusade? Oh boy... that was a fun fest of massive lag and server crashes and all. Really though, Wow wasn't perfect. Rift is extremely well polished for just being released, I'd go so far as to say its one of the 'cleanest' released titles out there in terms of having very little problems on release. You can't expect any game to have no problems when its first out. Its just going to happen, no matter how much time you spent on it. Even wow has its own issues that it fixes and its had so much more work done with it. They can solve issues all they want and learn ways to alleviate it, but they can't cleanse all the troubles they encounter, its unrealistic to expect that.
Excellent point. EQ had vast areas of vland nothing ness that you could runthrough if you wanted. EQ also made it harder for people that chose different races to reach each other and play together. Bigger doesn't necessarily mean better. Any idiot can make a massive empty map and fill it with spawns.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Until the general market's demand for 'better graphics' cease, the development costs for games will continue to increase.
While EQ was not bad at the time of release, technology has moved on.
Sides, the amount of people that'll play a new MMO just can't be compared since people talk in terms of 'Millions' nowadays.
The infrastructure to support that isn't free.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
That didn't work i'm sorry.
Some game like Lineage2 did launch this trend "have a very strong but tiny core, then expend". But it turned out to be very displeasing for the players. When you play a new mmo you expect a full and rich world, and not a combat system that get updated once every 6 month for free. Look at Tera went the same way and isn't doing fine for the same reasons.
An mmo cannot start small, because it is not what expect mmo gamers.
There are good games and bad games, in the end we only remember the good games, which may make it look like all ancient games where awesome and good.... while today there is a lot of trash (only because we have forgotten about the trash produced 20 years ago)
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)