You ask a question and then answered it yourself and then imposed your own judgement based on the answer?
I'll give you "boredom" That is correct. But what is wrong with saying we want a game where we can build cities, housing, markets, content and everything else in said virtual world that has any value?
Someone once said in these forums. "Give us an empty worlrd, resources and tools, and get out of our way."
That fact that it doesn't exist currently, doesn't mean it's wrong to want it.
There's nothing wrong with stating your preferences. Just don't say that your opinions are somehow better than mine - that your opinions are somehow universally better. Old-school players are in no way superior to new ones. Many of these "downfall of MMORPGs" and doom & gloom threads come from the same source: That people think their view is right, and anyone who disagrees can go f*** themselves.
I've been called a WoW-fanboi numerous times on these forums because I've tried to be moderate. I've never even played WoW! I began playing MMORPGs before WoW. Old-school MMOs, in my mind, had questionable production values and they were severely lacking as games. Also, I didn't find any of the same magic I found from tabletop RPGs at the time. There were not enough good things to outweigh the bad - so I didn't like them at all.
I actually like where the genre is going. Sure there was a moment of stagnation but I am not blaming anyone for trying to replicate WoW's success. It is perfectly understandable. However sadly their efforts were rather feeble. It doesn't make me a "WoW fanboi" or whatever if I like the new crop of MMORPGs. Me nor any of my friends or online friends fit these ridiculous stereotypes. I'm pretty sure no-one does. Keywords such as: "WoW kiddies", "instant gratification", "dumbed down", "console gamers", "WoW-clones" etc. does not give any weight to an argument. Things are not usually this one-dimensional or black & white. Arguments based on these cannot be taken seriously. See my sig.
High-profile games are made to the majority. Minorities get indie developed games. That is how the world works. No amount of whining in the forums is going to change that.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
You ask a question and then answered it yourself and then imposed your own judgement based on the answer?
I'll give you "boredom" That is correct. But what is wrong with saying we want a game where we can build cities, housing, markets, content and everything else in said virtual world that has any value?
Someone once said in these forums. "Give us an empty worlrd, resources and tools, and get out of our way."
That fact that it doesn't exist currently, doesn't mean it's wrong to want it.
There's nothing wrong with stating your preferences. Just don't say that your opinions are somehow better than mine - that your opinions are somehow universally better. Old-school players are in no way superior to new ones. Many of these "downfall of MMORPGs" and doom & gloom threads come from the same source: That people think their view is right, and anyone who disagrees can go f*** themselves.
I've been called a WoW-fanboi numerous times on these forums because I've tried to be moderate. I've never even played WoW! I began playing MMORPGs before WoW. Old-school MMOs, in my mind, had questionable production values and they were severely lacking as games. Also, I didn't find any of the same magic I found from tabletop RPGs at the time. There were not enough good things to outweigh the bad - so I didn't like them at all.
I actually like where the genre is going. Sure there was a moment of stagnation but I am not blaming anyone for trying to replicate WoW's success. It is perfectly understandable. However sadly their efforts were rather feeble. It doesn't make me a "WoW fanboi" or whatever if I like the new crop of MMORPGs. Me nor any of my friends or online friends fit these ridiculous stereotypes. I'm pretty sure no-one does. Keywords such as: "WoW kiddies", "instant gratification", "dumbed down", "console gamers", "WoW-clones" etc. does not give any weight to an argument. Things are not usually this one-dimensional or black & white. Arguments based on these cannot be taken seriously. See my sig.
High-profile games are made to the majority. Minorities get indie developed games. That is how the world works. No amount of whining in the forums is going to change that.
Do you actually think that the future of gaming is WOW clones on top of WOW clones. TOR is a great example of how to make a great game but not a MMORPG. All,you have to do is look at the up coming games and how they are moving away from the on rails linear gameplay and moving into an a somewhat old/new direction. GW2 is getting away from the holy trinity and even though there is story it doesn't look like it will be shoved in peoples faces like TOR has done. Archeage is moving even further than that and going back to making a real mmorg, with a truly epic lanscape that is alive and breathing. To many dev companies are trying to blur the lines between pc mmorpg and console mmo's and that's where the problem lies.
You ask a question and then answered it yourself and then imposed your own judgement based on the answer?
I'll give you "boredom" That is correct. But what is wrong with saying we want a game where we can build cities, housing, markets, content and everything else in said virtual world that has any value?
Someone once said in these forums. "Give us an empty worlrd, resources and tools, and get out of our way."
That fact that it doesn't exist currently, doesn't mean it's wrong to want it.
There's nothing wrong with stating your preferences. Just don't say that your opinions are somehow better than mine - that your opinions are somehow universally better. Old-school players are in no way superior to new ones. Many of these "downfall of MMORPGs" and doom & gloom threads come from the same source: That people think their view is right, and anyone who disagrees can go f*** themselves.
I've been called a WoW-fanboi numerous times on these forums because I've tried to be moderate. I've never even played WoW! I began playing MMORPGs before WoW. Old-school MMOs, in my mind, had questionable production values and they were severely lacking as games. Also, I didn't find any of the same magic I found from tabletop RPGs at the time. There were not enough good things to outweigh the bad - so I didn't like them at all.
I actually like where the genre is going. Sure there was a moment of stagnation but I am not blaming anyone for trying to replicate WoW's success. It is perfectly understandable. However sadly their efforts were rather feeble. It doesn't make me a "WoW fanboi" or whatever if I like the new crop of MMORPGs. Me nor any of my friends or online friends fit these ridiculous stereotypes. I'm pretty sure no-one does. Keywords such as: "WoW kiddies", "instant gratification", "dumbed down", "console gamers", "WoW-clones" etc. does not give any weight to an argument. Things are not usually this one-dimensional or black & white. Arguments based on these cannot be taken seriously. See my sig.
High-profile games are made to the majority. Minorities get indie developed games. That is how the world works. No amount of whining in the forums is going to change that.
Nice....Don't judge you, but you can tell us how your opinion is right, just we can't do the same...got it! Nice pic, maybe you should read your thread, then look at it a little more.
High profile games are made for the majority huh....Maybe so, but it doesn't mean they targeted the right people, or made a good game, if they did, 90% wouldn't be going F2P because they don't hold up...
I will argue that the Dev cycle is starting to turn to more hybrid type games now, and people have realized that trying to make the next WoW with a twist is not going to cut it....Developers for the most part had gotten lazy/cheap, starter areas are severly cut, quest hub/linear play, token/badge grinds for pvp/pve gear, everything instanced, then they throw in their twist to make it different.... While a lot of the supporting systems are worthless, like crafting/harvesting....Heck look at WAR, they had to have one of the worst crafting systems at release ever imo...It was like they just threw something in there to say they had it.
TSW/AA are more hybrid, GW2, we will see, but they are trying to be different and take out the gear grind and make it a cosmetic grind it seems, and continuation of the b2p model, we will have to see how both of those work.
I think hybrid is the new direction, and when that becomes the normal, you may get a good sandbox to come about... People do get sick of playing the same type of game, so I think many of the WoW generation would be open to a good hybrid, not saying majority, but a good number.
High profile games are made for the majority huh....Maybe so, but it doesn't mean they targeted the right people, or made a good game, if they did, 90% wouldn't be going F2P because they don't hold up...
Or may be because F2P can make more money by milking the "whales" more effectively? LOTRO was doing fine before F2P. But one look at the increased revenue for DDO, and the rest is history.
TSW/AA are more hybrid, GW2, we will see, but they are trying to be different and take out the gear grind and make it a cosmetic grind it seems, and continuation of the b2p model, we will have to see how both of those work.
I think TSW can win probably NOT because it is sand boxy, but the different combat mechanics (no more trinity) and different progression. It still need the themepark content for players to have something to do.
TSW/AA are more hybrid, GW2, we will see, but they are trying to be different and take out the gear grind and make it a cosmetic grind it seems, and continuation of the b2p model, we will have to see how both of those work.
I think TSW can win probably NOT because it is sand boxy, but the different combat mechanics (no more trinity) and different progression. It still need the themepark content for players to have something to do.
Wait, wait... I saw a video where the developer demonstrated a full party which had a tank, melee dps/secondary tank, ranged dps, a mage and a healer. It sure sounded like a trinity game then.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Do you actually think that the future of gaming is WOW clones on top of WOW clones. TOR is a great example of how to make a great game but not a MMORPG. All,you have to do is look at the up coming games and how they are moving away from the on rails linear gameplay and moving into an a somewhat old/new direction. GW2 is getting away from the holy trinity and even though there is story it doesn't look like it will be shoved in peoples faces like TOR has done. Archeage is moving even further than that and going back to making a real mmorg, with a truly epic lanscape that is alive and breathing. To many dev companies are trying to blur the lines between pc mmorpg and console mmo's and that's where the problem lies.
How is TOR not a MMORPG? Most people would expect just that when they hear "MMORPG".
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Do you actually think that the future of gaming is WOW clones on top of WOW clones. TOR is a great example of how to make a great game but not a MMORPG. All,you have to do is look at the up coming games and how they are moving away from the on rails linear gameplay and moving into an a somewhat old/new direction. GW2 is getting away from the holy trinity and even though there is story it doesn't look like it will be shoved in peoples faces like TOR has done. Archeage is moving even further than that and going back to making a real mmorg, with a truly epic lanscape that is alive and breathing. To many dev companies are trying to blur the lines between pc mmorpg and console mmo's and that's where the problem lies.
How is TOR not a MMORPG? Most people would expect just that when they hear "MMORPG".
It is not an MMORPG because the game is designed in such a way to separate people, rather than to bring them together. In TOR your character is saving/conquering place X but only inside your own little bubble, the world will stay the same before and after you have "saved the world".
The whole game is basically a single player game but one where you are playing on the same server as others but not affecting each other in any way or form. It is in itself a contradiction, a massively single player online game.
Nice....Don't judge you, but you can tell us how your opinion is right, just we can't do the same...got it! Nice pic, maybe you should read your thread, then look at it a little more.
High profile games are made for the majority huh....Maybe so, but it doesn't mean they targeted the right people, or made a good game, if they did, 90% wouldn't be going F2P because they don't hold up...
I will argue that the Dev cycle is starting to turn to more hybrid type games now, and people have realized that trying to make the next WoW with a twist is not going to cut it....Developers for the most part had gotten lazy/cheap, starter areas are severly cut, quest hub/linear play, token/badge grinds for pvp/pve gear, everything instanced, then they throw in their twist to make it different.... While a lot of the supporting systems are worthless, like crafting/harvesting....Heck look at WAR, they had to have one of the worst crafting systems at release ever imo...It was like they just threw something in there to say they had it.
TSW/AA are more hybrid, GW2, we will see, but they are trying to be different and take out the gear grind and make it a cosmetic grind it seems, and continuation of the b2p model, we will have to see how both of those work.
I think hybrid is the new direction, and when that becomes the normal, you may get a good sandbox to come about... People do get sick of playing the same type of game, so I think many of the WoW generation would be open to a good hybrid, not saying majority, but a good number.
Where did I say that my opinion was better than yours? Point that out for me please.
High profile games targeted to the wrong audience? Please, do explain.
Instances are not "laziness" they are a design decision with pros and cons just like non-instanced content. Instanced dungeons have solved some of the issues with non-instanced dungeon. They are pretty much the norm now. Crafting and harvesting clearly doesn't sell as well as regular adventuring and killing monsters. And WAR was a poorly managed game - a troubled project to say the least. It is hardly fair to use it as an example of the new crop of MMORPGs.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
It is not an MMORPG because the game is designed in such a way to separate people, rather than to bring them together. In TOR your character is saving/conquering place X but only inside your own little bubble, the world will stay the same before and after you have "saved the world".
The whole game is basically a single player game but one where you are playing on the same server as others but not affecting each other in any way or form. It is in itself a contradiction, a massively single player online game.
This generally happens in every MMO read the text while questing.
In World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, you where able to play a draenie (Forgot how to spell it), if you bothered to read the quest line for their starting place you'd realize that every single draenie is the saviour of the draenie race. This happens in most MMO due to the fact that in a quest based gaming system there has to be a degree of linarity.
What confueses (A terrible speller lol) me is how one is willing to call GW1 (And to an extent GW2) an MMO no problem but to call TOR less of an MMO because it has an over all linar story, which keep in mind you can bring friends with, seems foolish.
Where did I say that my opinion was better than yours? Point that out for me please.
High profile games targeted to the wrong audience? Please, do explain.
Instances are not "laziness" they are a design decision with pros and cons just like non-instanced content. Instanced dungeons have solved some of the issues with non-instanced dungeon. They are pretty much the norm now. Crafting and harvesting clearly doesn't sell as well as regular adventuring and killing monsters. And WAR was a poorly managed game - a troubled project to say the least. It is hardly fair to use it as an example of the new crop of MMORPGs.
Instances are laziness. If the world was large enough with enough interesting content then people would be naturally spread out without forcing them into instances which are basically identical copies of the same area. So instead of creating additional, different areas, they create different instances of the same area. If that is not lazyness I dont know what is.
It is not an MMORPG because the game is designed in such a way to separate people, rather than to bring them together. In TOR your character is saving/conquering place X but only inside your own little bubble, the world will stay the same before and after you have "saved the world".
The whole game is basically a single player game but one where you are playing on the same server as others but not affecting each other in any way or form. It is in itself a contradiction, a massively single player online game.
So what you are basically saying is that it is not a MMORPG by your definition. I will still call it a MMORPG tho.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
It is not an MMORPG because the game is designed in such a way to separate people, rather than to bring them together. In TOR your character is saving/conquering place X but only inside your own little bubble, the world will stay the same before and after you have "saved the world".
The whole game is basically a single player game but one where you are playing on the same server as others but not affecting each other in any way or form. It is in itself a contradiction, a massively single player online game.
This generally happens in every MMO read the text while questing.
In World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, you where able to play a draenie (Forgot how to spell it), if you bothered to read the quest line for their starting place you'd realize that every single draenie is the saviour of the draenie race. This happens in most MMO due to the fact that in a quest based gaming system there has to be a degree of linarity.
What confueses (A terrible speller lol) me is how one is willing to call GW1 (And to an extent GW2) an MMO no problem but to call TOR less of an MMO because it has an over all linar story, which keep in mind you can bring friends with, seems foolish.
Two wrongs does not make it right. Just because most triple A MMORPGs are putting more and more single player features in an MMORPG does not make it right. However what is so different in SW:TOR is that it is so obvious that you are in your own bubble. You are constantly going in and out of private instances and there are very few, if any, open dungeons where you can bump into other people.
The whole game is designed to create private single/group areas for you. It is the opposite of what an MMORPG should do, which is to bring people together, not isolate them. I personally almost never see other people anymore when I am out and leveling, the only place where I know I will see other's is in fleet and I play on one of the most populated servers too. Open world interaction with other people is basically non existant in this game, almost everything is instanced.
And no, I would not call GW 1 an MMORPG either. I would call WoW one though, because when I played it a few years back I did regularly see people in the open world. That for me is the minimum requirement to call a game MMORPG.
Where did I say that my opinion was better than yours? Point that out for me please.
High profile games targeted to the wrong audience? Please, do explain.
Instances are not "laziness" they are a design decision with pros and cons just like non-instanced content. Instanced dungeons have solved some of the issues with non-instanced dungeon. They are pretty much the norm now. Crafting and harvesting clearly doesn't sell as well as regular adventuring and killing monsters. And WAR was a poorly managed game - a troubled project to say the least. It is hardly fair to use it as an example of the new crop of MMORPGs.
Instances are laziness. If the world was large enough with enough interesting content then people would be naturally spread out without forcing them into instances which are basically identical copies of the same area. So instead of creating additional, different areas, they create different instances of the same area. If that is not lazyness I dont know what is.
They solved camping, ninja looting, queuing, ganking and you can do away with mob respawn. They also give the developers the opportunity to add more profound encounters or scripted content which in turn makes for a lot of fun gameplay for the players. They are also easier to balance and the difficulty is adjustable because the amount of people in the dungeon is fixed. You can even customize the content or difficulty setting for the players. Also, instances with their controlled player numbers have lower performance requirements and enables the developers to add more gamey mechanics to it like physics, collision detection, real-time combat, abilities that demand reaction, possibly aiming etc. I'd say thats a good amount of advantages instances bring, don't you think?
"Having a large enough world" is a pretty tall order unless the game's population was relatively small. Be reasonable, these are not servers with just few hundred people anymore!
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
No sci fi games,space, u can count em on both hands.Only dragons,elf,swords,and dragons and orcs and wolfs,and shit all medevil shit,Really there is not enough color in the janras to choose from.Woud love to see minecraft still mmoo not pixel,blocked but to go outside u kil get hungry make ur house settle in,afraid to go outside on dark etc.But we see only fails like Starwars pop up made up its popularity cause its name and fanbase nothink else.
Uh?
TOR, STO, Eve, COH, DC Universe, ....
just a heads up. none of those are science fiction, in terms of narative genre:
eve is science fantasy.
COH and DC universe (sound like) the comic book stuff... not scientific or even kinda evidence based.
TOR is starwars which, only the first movie of which was really kinda science fiction, but after retrospection it breaks laws of physics.
deus ex (single player videogame) is more science fiction, but not an mmo at all. same with halflife. why they are science fiction rather than science fantasy is because they haven't (as far as i'm aware) been disproven as possible, and they aren't rooted in technologies which are beyond the present human event horizon.
secret world might be science fiction, idk, i suspect it will merely be present fantasy...
They solved camping, ninja looting, queuing, ganking and you can do away with mob respawn. They also give the developers the opportunity to add more profound encounters or scripted content which in turn makes for a lot of fun gameplay for the players. They are also easier to balance and the difficulty is adjustable because the amount of people in the dungeon is fixed. You can even customize the content or difficulty setting for the players. Also, instances with their controlled player numbers have lower performance requirements and enables the developers to add more gamey mechanics to it like physics, collision detection, real-time combat, abilities that demand reaction, possibly aiming etc. I'd say thats a good amount of advantages instances bring, don't you think?
"Having a large enough world" is a pretty tall order unless the game's population was relatively small. Be reasonable, these are not servers with just few hundred people anymore!
On Rallos Zek in EQ we had Camping, Ninja Looting, Ganking, Queuing (cause it didn't exist) solved before WoW even was out because we had FFA pvp and a community. And guess what we had mob respawns pretty much solved too because we had player enforced rotations on high profile mobs and people were civil cause they had to be to get anywhere
Oh and we also had gold farmers & botters solved too because we killed them whenever we saw them.
As far as "instances" being easier to balance because you had fewer people. How about the flip side that forces guilds to pick and chose which members to bring at an event cause they are forced to play favorites and dissapoint some of their members if too many people show up.
As far as physics? Most modern MMO's have no collision detection on player models (EQ had it though). The others just make for spammy console based gameplay that makes a person think they are playing well but in essence just mashing buttons.
To me it sounds like MMOs have gone backwards since 10 years ago which reinforces the original point of this thread.
On Rallos Zek in EQ we had Camping, Ninja Looting, Ganking, Queuing (cause it didn't exist) solved before WoW even was out because we had FFA pvp and a community. And guess what we had mob respawns pretty much solved too because we had player enforced rotations on high profile mobs and people were civil cause they had to be to get anywhere
Oh and we also had gold farmers & botters solved too because we killed them whenever we saw them.
As far as "instances" being easier to balance because you had fewer people. How about the flip side that forces guilds to pick and chose which members to bring at an event cause they are forced to play favorites and dissapoint some of their members if too many people show up.
As far as physics? Most modern MMO's have no collision detection on player models (EQ had it though). The others just make for spammy console based gameplay that makes a person think they are playing well but in essence just mashing buttons.
To me it sounds like MMOs have gone backwards since 10 years ago which reinforces the original point of this thread.
The thing with collision detection on character is that you really need PvP for it to work, otherwise some jackasses will block you off. Lineage had actually PvP zones in all places that could be a problem even on the PvE servers to solve the problem (it worked BTW).
But I still think that there is good that some servers are PvP while others are PvE. Players should be able to choose the set they prefer even if it gives you issue like EQ actually had on PvE servers.
MMOs have not only moved backwards though, remember how buggy EQ and M59 were?
But some of the old stuff were really good. Other stuff not so good
Tell that to the publishers who keep pumping out WoW clones without any idea how the MMO market works, and losing millions.
Hey Garvon, can you name any of these "WoW clones" that lost millions? Because the only thing they failed in was that they weren't able to replicate WoW's success. With that many potential customers out there, it certainly didn't hurt to try, did it?
Oh, why yes it certainly did hurt to try. Very easy to name some failures.
AoC failed so hard that they were getting sued by players, and their partners and investors had to file for bankruptcy.
WAR failed so hard Mythic had to cancel two projects, and had their team broken into 3 pieces and put into maintainence mode.
LotRO was a more mild failure but they went from having about a million players interested in Middle Earth Online to the modest 70k or so that played LotRO before it went FTP. Turbine had to shrink their development team and a lot of their vets were shuffled into other projects.
When these hundred million dollar projects can't even reach the same number of subs that pre WoW pre broadband MMOs had, it's pretty damn sad.
So, trying to copy WoW hasn't gone well, has it? As I said before, just because these games are still alive doesn't make them a profitable success. AoC HAD to stay open to try to recoup their losses. When you try to go for a grand slam and end up getting out at first, I'd call that a failure.
On these games you listed as failures, you have failed to demonstrate that it's the copying of WoW that caused the failure rather than something else, such as over promising or poor design choices or other things.
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 have been bashing my fingertips to the bone saying these same things over and over only to be flamed to death and told I was wrong by the fanboys. But it's funny that...if we are so wrong, why are SO MANY saying the same thing about all of this on a daily basis? and so many complaining about the lack of anything truly unique, innovative, or just all around interesting in all these MMO's coming out?
Sadly...Skyrim has more of an MMORPG feel than any current MMORPG on the market.
What "so many"? A few people (even a few hundred) people on ONE internet forum do not make "so many" in a market with millions.
Plus, they probably have nothing better to do but to whine.
Beg to differ. I see it on many sites, hear it in many game shops I go to looking for games. Just seems not that many because they are outwhined by the new schoolers. Again...too many new schoolers who are selfish and have ADD that are fine to have the "Look! I am a hero and special!" single player MMO that just "happens to have" other players roaming it too. But community is nearly extinct in them...which is what made them worth playing for years on top of the free to roam, open world gameplay...that also no longer exists since you are funneled everywhere with dots and ?/!'s.
You just reminded me of something. The new schoolers are different and probably dont want the same social experience we grew up with because they live in a social media world. Think about it.. would we play EQ1 as hard as we did if you had twitter, facebook, instant messaging, iphones, etc. Kids today are already connected. I noticed my nephew playing Call of Duty 3, while listening to music, texting his friend... who was playing CoD 3 too!!
I grew up in the NES era and I was the new schooler to those who played games that didnt have an ending. Back then I remember hearing the same argument.
With that said, I agree with (mostly) everyone here. I want a different, drama filled, challenging game to play in... for months. Where users are the economy. I cant predict if or when that will come but I will enjoy playing Eden Eternal waiting for Guild Wars 2 and TERA, hoping ArcheAge will be a good example of how to break the mold.
This is no excuse. My answer to you is yes...I still would of played it as hard because it was fun, and a WAY better social interaction than FB, or Twitter, etc, etc. Dev's are just appeasing the masses that are filled with a sense of self entitlement and want every now and want to be the center of attention and the hero. Hence...MMORPG's have de-evolved into single player games that just happen to have other players running around in them that you may or may not get to say two words to you in your race to end game so you can get bored and move on to the next hamster wheel game to rinse and repeat. Vicious cycle of mediocrity.
At one time...MMORPG's were about "us", now they are about "me me me".
Well technically out of all the players who play mmorpgs only a small number, relatively, are saying these things
And that is why they are garbage. Too many new school players that have never tried, or never got the chance to experience what made them great and a different genre from...well, any other gaming genre. Nor do they seem to care to.
Oh, noooo! Pulling out the old school card! Are you fucking kidding me?
I love how many of you still continue to pull this shit speaking for thousands of new players who you think wouldn't appreciate the classics! You guys can't even make up your fucking minds.
-If it's new it's not old school enough.
-If it's new it's not innovative enough.
Why don't you try reading Neiken's post a couple above that one...spot on what I was getting at.
On Rallos Zek in EQ we had Camping, Ninja Looting, Ganking, Queuing (cause it didn't exist) solved before WoW even was out because we had FFA pvp and a community. And guess what we had mob respawns pretty much solved too because we had player enforced rotations on high profile mobs and people were civil cause they had to be to get anywhere
Oh and we also had gold farmers & botters solved too because we killed them whenever we saw them.
As far as "instances" being easier to balance because you had fewer people. How about the flip side that forces guilds to pick and chose which members to bring at an event cause they are forced to play favorites and dissapoint some of their members if too many people show up.
As far as physics? Most modern MMO's have no collision detection on player models (EQ had it though). The others just make for spammy console based gameplay that makes a person think they are playing well but in essence just mashing buttons.
To me it sounds like MMOs have gone backwards since 10 years ago which reinforces the original point of this thread.
What about the great majority that do not enjoy PvP? And are you seriously proposing that collision detection somehow makes the game dumbed down?
Solved gold farmers, huh? You didn't have gold farmers in the scale we have them now. It wasn't as big of a business then. And you did not have such large communities and diverse gaming backgrounds that gamers have now. Its impossible to know everyone on your server.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
On Rallos Zek in EQ we had Camping, Ninja Looting, Ganking, Queuing (cause it didn't exist) solved before WoW even was out because we had FFA pvp and a community. And guess what we had mob respawns pretty much solved too because we had player enforced rotations on high profile mobs and people were civil cause they had to be to get anywhere
Oh and we also had gold farmers & botters solved too because we killed them whenever we saw them.
As far as "instances" being easier to balance because you had fewer people. How about the flip side that forces guilds to pick and chose which members to bring at an event cause they are forced to play favorites and dissapoint some of their members if too many people show up.
As far as physics? Most modern MMO's have no collision detection on player models (EQ had it though). The others just make for spammy console based gameplay that makes a person think they are playing well but in essence just mashing buttons.
To me it sounds like MMOs have gone backwards since 10 years ago which reinforces the original point of this thread.
What about the great majority that do not enjoy PvP? And are you seriously proposing that collision detection somehow makes the game dumbed down?
Solved gold farmers, huh? You didn't have gold farmers in the scale we have them now. It wasn't as big of a business then. And you did not have such large communities and diverse gaming backgrounds that gamers have now. Its impossible to know everyone on your server.
It's only impossible to you because players don't interact when they can solo to cap and don't need other people. Plus...some games having cross server features doesn't help either. The only thing that seems to be innovating in MMO's anymore are new ways to kill community further.
On Rallos Zek in EQ we had Camping, Ninja Looting, Ganking, Queuing (cause it didn't exist) solved before WoW even was out because we had FFA pvp and a community. And guess what we had mob respawns pretty much solved too because we had player enforced rotations on high profile mobs and people were civil cause they had to be to get anywhere
Oh and we also had gold farmers & botters solved too because we killed them whenever we saw them.
As far as "instances" being easier to balance because you had fewer people. How about the flip side that forces guilds to pick and chose which members to bring at an event cause they are forced to play favorites and dissapoint some of their members if too many people show up.
As far as physics? Most modern MMO's have no collision detection on player models (EQ had it though). The others just make for spammy console based gameplay that makes a person think they are playing well but in essence just mashing buttons.
To me it sounds like MMOs have gone backwards since 10 years ago which reinforces the original point of this thread.
What about the great majority that do not enjoy PvP? And are you seriously proposing that collision detection somehow makes the game dumbed down?
Solved gold farmers, huh? You didn't have gold farmers in the scale we have them now. It wasn't as big of a business then. And you did not have such large communities and diverse gaming backgrounds that gamers have now. Its impossible to know everyone on your server.
You honestly have no clue how Rallos Zek was. It wasn't a constant war/gank server. In many ways it was very similar to a non pvp server. Infact we probably got along better than the non pvp servers. People were held accountable for their actions. Yeah there were a few rotten apples but you learned them quickly & the server was pretty friendly/civil if you actually behaved yourself. So although it was ffa pvp it was pretty much consentual (as in if you actually knew how to interact with other people there wasn't much of it but if you crossed that line you were punished) Guild wars happened when people broke the rules & weren't punished. They weren't that common but they had real consequences (usually involving monetary fines to get off KOS lists which weren't trivial) . The random gankers on Rallos Zek were not well equipped at all because they were social outcasts which meant they were pretty easy to deal with.
I know alot of people who would buy into that kind of pvp if it meant not having to listen to chuck norris jokes or the likes from other players. The pvp on Rallos Zek was prior to the influx the FPS/Console generation into pvp. Back then your guilds honor meant something.
And as far as gold farmers? I recognized probably about 75% of the people on my servers. And you also could usually gauge someones worth from the guild they were in (if they weren't in a guild they usually werent for a reason). And you know what. Gold farmers were usually either unguilded or in guilds that popped up out of nowhere. There was no reason to have to "know" a person to figure out there was a gold farmer. There is such a thing as talking to people in the community (ie send a tell to people you know outside of your guild and ask what they think about a person, its kinda like an intelligence network and works really well)
Funnily enough I don't see a great deal of refutation in your post there. It is quite clear why 95% (in your words) of the money invested in mmorpgs goes on themeparks and it has fuck all to do with overall quality of the games in question. If you can turn out the same old shit with flashing lights and go faster stripes and people lap it up, you do exactly that.
Games are being dumbed down, not due to them not having long ass grinds, not due to them not having death penalties or nine hour respawns. The are primarily being dumbed down because 99% of games are simply piss poor reskins of last years big title with a few more single player features crammed in. That people are still falling for it pretty much points to the fact that they are dumb twats as well for the main.
Btw who are "you guys", some kind of online 1%?
Lol really want to make a "WE ARE THE 99%" joke...
I actually agree for the most part - but I admit that I am an elitist prick who knows (not thinks, knows) he is better than most people. Smarter, funnier, more logical... hell look at my post history and who I chose as a name and avatar!
I'm also a realist. The PvE sandbox with 0% grind I want is not the PvP orgy fest most sandboxers want.
I also have adapted and have fun (even if it is only for a few weeks/months at a time) with the current crop of games because they are often mindless and fun. I like mindless and fun.
Probably cause I'm getting old, not cause I'm too young and stupid to know better.
People who say these kinds of things about themselves are the false advertising of the ego world. Really smart, logical, realistic people know that they do not have to say that they are. People just know. The fact that you are posting here and carrying on such a long winded post about a well beaten dead horse is just another nail in the coffen.
Sorry....just can't stand large egos much
This is blatantly untrue. Loads of geniuses have huge superiority and ego complexes. Insult him if you must, but don't just make shit up to do it.
Which psychological studies can verify your statement regarding "loads of geniuses having huge superiority and ego complexes"?
A reply to Kinchyle:
I don't think any random person can easily know whether or not another person has 120 in IQ or 140 in IQ through natural regular observations. The situations in which the difference becomes very clear, are so few and rarely if ever happen in the daily life.
Furthermore, not bragging about your intelligence is a matter of manners, which is not a requirement for being intelligent.
As for being and feeling superior: completely depends on your ideals. If the ideal is to be intelligent, physicaly fit, healthy, well-dressed, well-groomed, well-educated, being a gentleman, compassionate, having good relationships with friends and family, socially competent, happy, having a good career, not working just for the sake of the money, humanistic, a man of their word, disciplined, charming and open-minded, then it would be difficult to feel completely superior in every aspect.
Comments
There's nothing wrong with stating your preferences. Just don't say that your opinions are somehow better than mine - that your opinions are somehow universally better. Old-school players are in no way superior to new ones. Many of these "downfall of MMORPGs" and doom & gloom threads come from the same source: That people think their view is right, and anyone who disagrees can go f*** themselves.
I've been called a WoW-fanboi numerous times on these forums because I've tried to be moderate. I've never even played WoW! I began playing MMORPGs before WoW. Old-school MMOs, in my mind, had questionable production values and they were severely lacking as games. Also, I didn't find any of the same magic I found from tabletop RPGs at the time. There were not enough good things to outweigh the bad - so I didn't like them at all.
I actually like where the genre is going. Sure there was a moment of stagnation but I am not blaming anyone for trying to replicate WoW's success. It is perfectly understandable. However sadly their efforts were rather feeble. It doesn't make me a "WoW fanboi" or whatever if I like the new crop of MMORPGs. Me nor any of my friends or online friends fit these ridiculous stereotypes. I'm pretty sure no-one does. Keywords such as: "WoW kiddies", "instant gratification", "dumbed down", "console gamers", "WoW-clones" etc. does not give any weight to an argument. Things are not usually this one-dimensional or black & white. Arguments based on these cannot be taken seriously. See my sig.
High-profile games are made to the majority. Minorities get indie developed games. That is how the world works. No amount of whining in the forums is going to change that.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Do you actually think that the future of gaming is WOW clones on top of WOW clones. TOR is a great example of how to make a great game but not a MMORPG. All,you have to do is look at the up coming games and how they are moving away from the on rails linear gameplay and moving into an a somewhat old/new direction. GW2 is getting away from the holy trinity and even though there is story it doesn't look like it will be shoved in peoples faces like TOR has done. Archeage is moving even further than that and going back to making a real mmorg, with a truly epic lanscape that is alive and breathing. To many dev companies are trying to blur the lines between pc mmorpg and console mmo's and that's where the problem lies.
Nice....Don't judge you, but you can tell us how your opinion is right, just we can't do the same...got it! Nice pic, maybe you should read your thread, then look at it a little more.
High profile games are made for the majority huh....Maybe so, but it doesn't mean they targeted the right people, or made a good game, if they did, 90% wouldn't be going F2P because they don't hold up...
I will argue that the Dev cycle is starting to turn to more hybrid type games now, and people have realized that trying to make the next WoW with a twist is not going to cut it....Developers for the most part had gotten lazy/cheap, starter areas are severly cut, quest hub/linear play, token/badge grinds for pvp/pve gear, everything instanced, then they throw in their twist to make it different.... While a lot of the supporting systems are worthless, like crafting/harvesting....Heck look at WAR, they had to have one of the worst crafting systems at release ever imo...It was like they just threw something in there to say they had it.
TSW/AA are more hybrid, GW2, we will see, but they are trying to be different and take out the gear grind and make it a cosmetic grind it seems, and continuation of the b2p model, we will have to see how both of those work.
I think hybrid is the new direction, and when that becomes the normal, you may get a good sandbox to come about... People do get sick of playing the same type of game, so I think many of the WoW generation would be open to a good hybrid, not saying majority, but a good number.
Or may be because F2P can make more money by milking the "whales" more effectively? LOTRO was doing fine before F2P. But one look at the increased revenue for DDO, and the rest is history.
I think TSW can win probably NOT because it is sand boxy, but the different combat mechanics (no more trinity) and different progression. It still need the themepark content for players to have something to do.
Wait, wait... I saw a video where the developer demonstrated a full party which had a tank, melee dps/secondary tank, ranged dps, a mage and a healer. It sure sounded like a trinity game then.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
How is TOR not a MMORPG? Most people would expect just that when they hear "MMORPG".
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
It is not an MMORPG because the game is designed in such a way to separate people, rather than to bring them together. In TOR your character is saving/conquering place X but only inside your own little bubble, the world will stay the same before and after you have "saved the world".
The whole game is basically a single player game but one where you are playing on the same server as others but not affecting each other in any way or form. It is in itself a contradiction, a massively single player online game.
My gaming blog
TOR is a huge contradiction, its an MMO that you play by yourself.
Where did I say that my opinion was better than yours? Point that out for me please.
High profile games targeted to the wrong audience? Please, do explain.
Instances are not "laziness" they are a design decision with pros and cons just like non-instanced content. Instanced dungeons have solved some of the issues with non-instanced dungeon. They are pretty much the norm now. Crafting and harvesting clearly doesn't sell as well as regular adventuring and killing monsters. And WAR was a poorly managed game - a troubled project to say the least. It is hardly fair to use it as an example of the new crop of MMORPGs.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
This generally happens in every MMO read the text while questing.
In World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, you where able to play a draenie (Forgot how to spell it), if you bothered to read the quest line for their starting place you'd realize that every single draenie is the saviour of the draenie race. This happens in most MMO due to the fact that in a quest based gaming system there has to be a degree of linarity.
What confueses (A terrible speller lol) me is how one is willing to call GW1 (And to an extent GW2) an MMO no problem but to call TOR less of an MMO because it has an over all linar story, which keep in mind you can bring friends with, seems foolish.
Instances are laziness. If the world was large enough with enough interesting content then people would be naturally spread out without forcing them into instances which are basically identical copies of the same area. So instead of creating additional, different areas, they create different instances of the same area. If that is not lazyness I dont know what is.
My gaming blog
So what you are basically saying is that it is not a MMORPG by your definition. I will still call it a MMORPG tho.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Two wrongs does not make it right. Just because most triple A MMORPGs are putting more and more single player features in an MMORPG does not make it right. However what is so different in SW:TOR is that it is so obvious that you are in your own bubble. You are constantly going in and out of private instances and there are very few, if any, open dungeons where you can bump into other people.
The whole game is designed to create private single/group areas for you. It is the opposite of what an MMORPG should do, which is to bring people together, not isolate them. I personally almost never see other people anymore when I am out and leveling, the only place where I know I will see other's is in fleet and I play on one of the most populated servers too. Open world interaction with other people is basically non existant in this game, almost everything is instanced.
And no, I would not call GW 1 an MMORPG either. I would call WoW one though, because when I played it a few years back I did regularly see people in the open world. That for me is the minimum requirement to call a game MMORPG.
My gaming blog
They solved camping, ninja looting, queuing, ganking and you can do away with mob respawn. They also give the developers the opportunity to add more profound encounters or scripted content which in turn makes for a lot of fun gameplay for the players. They are also easier to balance and the difficulty is adjustable because the amount of people in the dungeon is fixed. You can even customize the content or difficulty setting for the players. Also, instances with their controlled player numbers have lower performance requirements and enables the developers to add more gamey mechanics to it like physics, collision detection, real-time combat, abilities that demand reaction, possibly aiming etc. I'd say thats a good amount of advantages instances bring, don't you think?
"Having a large enough world" is a pretty tall order unless the game's population was relatively small. Be reasonable, these are not servers with just few hundred people anymore!
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
just a heads up. none of those are science fiction, in terms of narative genre:
eve is science fantasy.
COH and DC universe (sound like) the comic book stuff... not scientific or even kinda evidence based.
TOR is starwars which, only the first movie of which was really kinda science fiction, but after retrospection it breaks laws of physics.
deus ex (single player videogame) is more science fiction, but not an mmo at all. same with halflife. why they are science fiction rather than science fantasy is because they haven't (as far as i'm aware) been disproven as possible, and they aren't rooted in technologies which are beyond the present human event horizon.
secret world might be science fiction, idk, i suspect it will merely be present fantasy...
On Rallos Zek in EQ we had Camping, Ninja Looting, Ganking, Queuing (cause it didn't exist) solved before WoW even was out because we had FFA pvp and a community. And guess what we had mob respawns pretty much solved too because we had player enforced rotations on high profile mobs and people were civil cause they had to be to get anywhere
Oh and we also had gold farmers & botters solved too because we killed them whenever we saw them.
As far as "instances" being easier to balance because you had fewer people. How about the flip side that forces guilds to pick and chose which members to bring at an event cause they are forced to play favorites and dissapoint some of their members if too many people show up.
As far as physics? Most modern MMO's have no collision detection on player models (EQ had it though). The others just make for spammy console based gameplay that makes a person think they are playing well but in essence just mashing buttons.
To me it sounds like MMOs have gone backwards since 10 years ago which reinforces the original point of this thread.
The thing with collision detection on character is that you really need PvP for it to work, otherwise some jackasses will block you off. Lineage had actually PvP zones in all places that could be a problem even on the PvE servers to solve the problem (it worked BTW).
But I still think that there is good that some servers are PvP while others are PvE. Players should be able to choose the set they prefer even if it gives you issue like EQ actually had on PvE servers.
MMOs have not only moved backwards though, remember how buggy EQ and M59 were?
But some of the old stuff were really good. Other stuff not so good
On these games you listed as failures, you have failed to demonstrate that it's the copying of WoW that caused the failure rather than something else, such as over promising or poor design choices or other things.
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?"
This is no excuse. My answer to you is yes...I still would of played it as hard because it was fun, and a WAY better social interaction than FB, or Twitter, etc, etc. Dev's are just appeasing the masses that are filled with a sense of self entitlement and want every now and want to be the center of attention and the hero. Hence...MMORPG's have de-evolved into single player games that just happen to have other players running around in them that you may or may not get to say two words to you in your race to end game so you can get bored and move on to the next hamster wheel game to rinse and repeat. Vicious cycle of mediocrity.
At one time...MMORPG's were about "us", now they are about "me me me".
Why don't you try reading Neiken's post a couple above that one...spot on what I was getting at.
What about the great majority that do not enjoy PvP? And are you seriously proposing that collision detection somehow makes the game dumbed down?
Solved gold farmers, huh? You didn't have gold farmers in the scale we have them now. It wasn't as big of a business then. And you did not have such large communities and diverse gaming backgrounds that gamers have now. Its impossible to know everyone on your server.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
It's only impossible to you because players don't interact when they can solo to cap and don't need other people. Plus...some games having cross server features doesn't help either. The only thing that seems to be innovating in MMO's anymore are new ways to kill community further.
You honestly have no clue how Rallos Zek was. It wasn't a constant war/gank server. In many ways it was very similar to a non pvp server. Infact we probably got along better than the non pvp servers. People were held accountable for their actions. Yeah there were a few rotten apples but you learned them quickly & the server was pretty friendly/civil if you actually behaved yourself. So although it was ffa pvp it was pretty much consentual (as in if you actually knew how to interact with other people there wasn't much of it but if you crossed that line you were punished) Guild wars happened when people broke the rules & weren't punished. They weren't that common but they had real consequences (usually involving monetary fines to get off KOS lists which weren't trivial) . The random gankers on Rallos Zek were not well equipped at all because they were social outcasts which meant they were pretty easy to deal with.
I know alot of people who would buy into that kind of pvp if it meant not having to listen to chuck norris jokes or the likes from other players. The pvp on Rallos Zek was prior to the influx the FPS/Console generation into pvp. Back then your guilds honor meant something.
And as far as gold farmers? I recognized probably about 75% of the people on my servers. And you also could usually gauge someones worth from the guild they were in (if they weren't in a guild they usually werent for a reason). And you know what. Gold farmers were usually either unguilded or in guilds that popped up out of nowhere. There was no reason to have to "know" a person to figure out there was a gold farmer. There is such a thing as talking to people in the community (ie send a tell to people you know outside of your guild and ask what they think about a person, its kinda like an intelligence network and works really well)
Which psychological studies can verify your statement regarding "loads of geniuses having huge superiority and ego complexes"?
A reply to Kinchyle:
I don't think any random person can easily know whether or not another person has 120 in IQ or 140 in IQ through natural regular observations. The situations in which the difference becomes very clear, are so few and rarely if ever happen in the daily life.
Furthermore, not bragging about your intelligence is a matter of manners, which is not a requirement for being intelligent.
As for being and feeling superior: completely depends on your ideals. If the ideal is to be intelligent, physicaly fit, healthy, well-dressed, well-groomed, well-educated, being a gentleman, compassionate, having good relationships with friends and family, socially competent, happy, having a good career, not working just for the sake of the money, humanistic, a man of their word, disciplined, charming and open-minded, then it would be difficult to feel completely superior in every aspect.