Wrong. I never said that those things didn't exist, read what I posted, I said that from what I recall those features weren't dominant and present in all old MMO's or even the majority of them, nor were they exclusive to only the old MMO's.
I played EQ and some of those other old MMO's, and also a number of newer MMO's: I can't recall EQ's faction system being used in the other old MMO's which is kinda lame if that's being used as THE example that old MMO's had that new MMO's haven't, because then the other old MMO's would flunk at that aspect too.
Other newer MMO's used NPC factions in ways that the older MMO's didn't, if you consider those half-assed even without knowing how those new MMO's did it, then most of the other old MMO's excluding EQ did it full-assed, since they have nothing anywhere near EQ's faction system.
Same with the other points: if you consider the implementation of those features half-assed in other newer MMO's - merely bc you're one of those people apparently that needs to feel that all new MMO's suck and all old MMO's were heaven and bliss - then other old MMO's were even complete, total failures in those areas. EQ and DAoC failed enormously at player housing and crafting, as good as all old MMO's minus EQ failed big time at NPC factions, DAoC and UO failed at faction interaction etc.
But hey, good luck with dreaming about the old MMO's, I'll not be the person that wants to withhold you from that; hope you have any fun and luck in MMO's the upcoming years since it seems you'll need it.
Ad which ones did, which ones didnt? Because, regarding of old mmos, even vanilla wow is nowadays a old mmo, it had more interesting factions, resists played a a role, enchanting was more interesting, crafting played a much bigger role...
The half assed comes from the requirements and the impact, if you "grind" a faction to full in one day and all you get from it is something which you outleveled a week ago, it will feel half-assed, like player housing where you can put just a table and a chair into one room and choose the color of the curtains, compare that to eq2.
This is how modern mmos unfortunately do most of these things (obviously, there is a huge amount of people which would instantly quit, if they made a mistake choosing a faction, lets just let them use a tabard and enable them to do all to full).
Ad which ones did, which ones didnt? Because, regarding of old mmos, even vanilla wow is nowadays a old mmo, it had more interesting factions, resists played a a role, enchanting was more interesting, crafting played a much bigger role...
The half assed comes from the requirements and the impact, if you "grind" a faction to full in one day and all you get from it is something which you outleveled a week ago, it will feel half-assed, like player housing where you can put just a table and a chair into one room and choose the color of the curtains, compare that to eq2.
This is how modern mmos unfortunately do most of these things (obviously, there is a huge amount of people which would instantly quit, if they made a mistake choosing a faction, lets just let them use a tabard and enable them to do all to full).
Well, from his comments and features listed I assume he meant MMO's before WoW as the old ones, and the MMO's since WoW as the new ones. In any case, what I said still stands, most of the old MMO's incl EQ, DAoC and AC didn't have player housing just to use one feature as an example
Ad which ones did, which ones didnt? Because, regarding of old mmos, even vanilla wow is nowadays a old mmo, it had more interesting factions, resists played a a role, enchanting was more interesting, crafting played a much bigger role...
The half assed comes from the requirements and the impact, if you "grind" a faction to full in one day and all you get from it is something which you outleveled a week ago, it will feel half-assed, like player housing where you can put just a table and a chair into one room and choose the color of the curtains, compare that to eq2.
This is how modern mmos unfortunately do most of these things (obviously, there is a huge amount of people which would instantly quit, if they made a mistake choosing a faction, lets just let them use a tabard and enable them to do all to full).
Well, from his comments and features listed I assume he meant MMO's before WoW as the old ones, and the MMO's since WoW as the new ones. In any case, what I said still stands, most of the old MMO's incl EQ, DAoC and AC didn't have player housing just to use one feature as an example
Well, every game had something, that not every feature was in every game is of little importance (but feel free to explain why you feel it is relevant), its just a list of features which prolonged gameplay and were either dropped or made extremely simple. Thats all.
Not a casuality. If anything needless amount of damage types have been cut because they offer no additional depth to the game, they only complicate things. Complexity =/= depth.
Randomness
This is why I don't care for Bloodbowl for example. You can take the dice variation into account but sometimes even that is not enough. Sometimes the dice fucks you in the ass no matter how good a player you are. And that sucks. Especially in PvP. I don't want to win or lose because of a diceroll.
Player Housing
A minor feature justly cut. The level of detail the fans of this features want is simply not worth it. The work put into it does not bring enough value to the product as a whole. There's a lot more you can put your attention to. I'd imagine this feature would be one of the first ones to go if there'd be trouble staying on schedule. Its not a game maker or a game changer.
Complex Crafting and resources
Complex crafting seems to be very subjective it seems. Also, it tends to bring inconveniences to the majority that is not interested in "complex crafting". For example the lack of an auction house may bring more depth to trading and crafting but it is also a huge inconvenience for your average adventurer.
Detailed (representative) Inventory Icons
I do not know what you mean by this or why this diminishes the quality of newer games in any way.
Item Customization
There's plenty of item customization. TSW and GW2 both have it.
Large number of classes or skill builds
No change here - if anything, it has gone up. See what Vanguard and many others have made is made a huge number of boring classes and boring races that hugely resemble each other. The game still relies heavily on the holy trinity or tank-healer-DPS and only the best combos filling those roles count. Everything else is garbage - wasted manhours.
You could argue that newer games shield you from those shitty builds but the amount of useful builds has pretty much stayed the same - and like I said, if anything the amount has gone up.
customizing builds
Same as the above.
Inter-faction interaction
Don't know what you mean by this. Other than killing, I don't think we need anything more. I feel large player organizations can have adverse effects on the game.
RP tools (chat bubbles, sitting in chairs, etc.)
Yeah... don't care about this one. I have a pen & paper background and I'd much rather do my RPing there.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Ad which ones did, which ones didnt? Because, regarding of old mmos, even vanilla wow is nowadays a old mmo, it had more interesting factions, resists played a a role, enchanting was more interesting, crafting played a much bigger role...
The half assed comes from the requirements and the impact, if you "grind" a faction to full in one day and all you get from it is something which you outleveled a week ago, it will feel half-assed, like player housing where you can put just a table and a chair into one room and choose the color of the curtains, compare that to eq2.
This is how modern mmos unfortunately do most of these things (obviously, there is a huge amount of people which would instantly quit, if they made a mistake choosing a faction, lets just let them use a tabard and enable them to do all to full).
Well, from his comments and features listed I assume he meant MMO's before WoW as the old ones, and the MMO's since WoW as the new ones. In any case, what I said still stands, most of the old MMO's incl EQ, DAoC and AC didn't have player housing just to use one feature as an example
Well, every game had something, that not every feature was in every game is of little importance (but feel free to explain why you feel it is relevant), its just a list of features which prolonged gameplay and were either dropped or made extremely simple. Thats all.
Shrug. If the majority of old MMO's didn't have those features while newer MMO's do have them, then they weren't really a dominant trend in those old MMO's, and aren't really gone or dropped from the new MMO's. Just saying. 'every game has something', sure, that applies to the old MMO's as well as the new MMO's.
Not a casuality. If anything needless amount of damage types have been cut because they offer no additional depth to the game, they only complicate things. Complexity =/= depth.
Randomness
This is why I don't care for Bloodbowl for example. You can take the dice variation into account but sometimes even that is not enough. Sometimes the dice fucks you in the ass no matter how good a player you are. And that sucks. Especially in PvP. I don't want to win or lose because of a diceroll.
Player Housing
A minor feature justly cut. The level of detail the fans of this features want is simply not worth it. The work put into it does not bring enough value to the product as a whole. There's a lot more you can put your attention to. I'd imagine this feature would be one of the first ones to go if there'd be trouble staying on schedule. Its not a game maker or a game changer.
Complex Crafting and resources
Complex crafting seems to be very subjective it seems. Also, it tends to bring inconveniences to the majority that is not interested in "complex crafting". For example the lack of an auction house may bring more depth to trading and crafting but it is also a huge inconvenience for your average adventurer.
Detailed (representative) Inventory Icons
I do not know what you mean by this or why this diminishes the quality of newer games in any way.
Item Customization
There's plenty of item customization. TSW and GW2 both have it.
Large number of classes or skill builds
No change here - if anything, it has gone up. See what Vanguard and many others have made is made a huge number of boring classes and boring races that hugely resemble each other. The game still relies heavily on the holy trinity or tank-healer-DPS and only the best combos filling those roles count. Everything else is garbage - wasted manhours.
You could argue that newer games shield you from those shitty builds but the amount of useful builds has pretty much stayed the same - and like I said, if anything the amount has gone up.
customizing builds
Same as the above.
Inter-faction interaction
Don't know what you mean by this. Other than killing, I don't think we need anything more. I feel large player organizations can have adverse effects on the game.
RP tools (chat bubbles, sitting in chairs, etc.)
Yeah... don't care about this one. I have a pen & paper background and I'd much rather do my RPing there.
You could have saved yourself some time and just said, "I don't care about any of this stuff."
Another thing I'd like to point out about themeparks is that I question why they even bother with creating a world.
Seriously, why bother?
WOW for example, you stand in Org waiting for dungeon finder to pop, which warps you to the entrance and back to Org when done. Or fly past everything and everyone on a mount.
Tbh, I'm not really sure.
I loved WoW but I loved it for all the stuff nobody else did. I never raided and rarely went into instances. Yet, I wondered what the purpose of the world was.
To the tired "game starts at max level" my response always was "then why have anything else".
I never figured out that paradox, my theory is that a huge chunk of the WoW playerbase are actually world-dwellers and it earns WoW tons of subscribers.
Originally posted by NorseGod
Can you imagine the "new gamer" trying to figure out NPC factions? They can barely handle 2 player factions. There's a reason that whole list has been dropped.
These are the same kids that got trophies for being on the losing team because "everybody is a winner".
As a new player to WoW I loved all sorts of random stuff WoW used to have, like factions, or the fact that you had to train your weapons. I think you underestimate new players / casuals.
The people who got trophies are min-maxers, silly. Casuals don't care about trophies... or gear, or "content" or "endgame" or "progression". People who care about that are, by definition, not casual. We go fishing and do quests and walk around and crap, and then have to suffer various namecalling where everyone from battle.net forums to mmorpg.com thinks we're either noobs, idiots, kids in basements, or ruiners of games...
Another thing I'd like to point out about themeparks is that I question why they even bother with creating a world.
Seriously, why bother?
WOW for example, you stand in Org waiting for dungeon finder to pop, which warps you to the entrance and back to Org when done. Or fly past everything and everyone on a mount.
No need to talk to others, no need to go out into the world at all. Everything you need is in an auction house. Apply same rule to PVP.
I remember a time when people had to plan a dungeon raid. Run ON FOOT across the world fighting along the way to a dungeon to kill a boss that only spawns every 2 days just for a sword drop, not tokens or random loot.
Wait, it gets better. Other players were there too and your group had to kill their group. Either at the dungeon, in the dungeon, hell, in the middle of the woods in route to the dungeon.
This stuff use to be a big deal.
That is easy to explain.
1) Flying mounts are added in BC.
2) LFD/LFR is added MUCH later *after* the world is created.
Blizzard did NOT know that their players want a lobby game until much later. Look at Diablo 3. They make it with some MMO features (AH, crafting) and did not go the full MMO route because they know that there is no point to a world.
"I remember a time when people had to plan a dungeon raid. Run ON FOOT across the world fighting along the way to a dungeon to kill a boss that only spawns every 2 days just for a sword drop, not tokens or random loot." .. that is precisely FEW players ever want to do. Too much boring work. Too much commitment. People want to pop in the game and play a while, not living in it.
Blizzard did NOT know that their players want a lobby game until much later. Look at Diablo 3. They make it with some MMO features (AH, crafting) and did not go the full MMO route because they know that there is no point to a world.
Or maybe because Diablo III is a sequel to a game of a complete different genre? No, that can't possibly be it.
WoW would fall apart without a world, I assure you.
All i know is that I was ragged on when I posted thought out criticisms about SWTOR pre-release, and 6months later I find out that most people agree with me NOW rather than then?
Then TERA is touted as the next "AwesomeSaucery" to hit the market, and I also post thought out criticisms about the product only to be ragged on yet again. Only to find out after the launch that quite a few agree with most of my points, yet again.
Mind you every game should have a fair amount of criticism to give people a fair shake as to what the product actually is without bias or spin from the paid-off media. So there will NEVER be a "perfect" game that should never be criticized. People seem to have the wrong idea that to give criticism means you're trolling or "Hating" on a product, and that is quite simply not true.
All of the points the OP brought up I've brought up with SWTOR, TERA, RIFT, etc and I was shot down at the time (I believe the "Hype Monster" had many in its grasp).
So now GW2 & TSW are coming around the corner and the amount of bias & hype revolving around those products are like a twin-pulsar cluster that will fry you before you could even get close enough to form an opinion. TSW is a themepark by design, and GW2 is a SandPark, yet both are being hailed in their own respects as untouchables.
What exactly is going on with our community here O_o?
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity: Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
All i know is that I was ragged on when I posted thought out criticisms about SWTOR pre-release, and 6months later I find out that most people agree with me NOW rather than then?
Then TERA is touted as the next "AwesomeSaucery" to hit the market, and I also post thought out criticisms about the product only to be ragged on yet again. Only to find out after the launch that quite a few agree with most of my points, yet again.
Mind you every game should have a fair amount of criticism to give people a fair shake as to what the product actually is without bias or spin from the paid-off media. So there will NEVER be a "perfect" game that should never be criticized. People seem to have the wrong idea that to give criticism means you're trolling or "Hating" on a product, and that is quite simply not true.
All of the points the OP brought up I've brought up with SWTOR, TERA, RIFT, etc and I was shot down at the time (I believe the "Hype Monster" had many in its grasp).
So now GW2 & TSW are coming around the corner and the amount of bias & hype revolving around those products are like a twin-pulsar cluster that will fry you before you could even get close enough to form an opinion. TSW is a themepark by design, and GW2 is a SandPark, yet both are being hailed in their own respects as untouchables.
What exactly is going on with our community here O_o?
Would you like a cross? It is THE prop for martyrs.
Blizzard did NOT know that their players want a lobby game until much later. Look at Diablo 3. They make it with some MMO features (AH, crafting) and did not go the full MMO route because they know that there is no point to a world.
Or maybe because Diablo III is a sequel to a game of a complete different genre? No, that can't possibly be it.
WoW would fall apart without a world, I assure you.
The genre are converging. Diablo 3 has MMO elements (AH, crafting). Many MMOs are more like Diablo than open world games (DDO, WOW LFD/LFR, ....)
And Diablo 3 has a lot of the player base as MMO/WOW. How many WOW players are playing D3? At least 1.2M.
The point is that a well made lobby-based co-op ARPG can be as successful, if not MORE successful (D3 is prob more successful in terms of player numbers & revenue than 95% of the MMOs) than a traditional virtual world MMO.
All i know is that I was ragged on when I posted thought out criticisms about SWTOR pre-release, and 6months later I find out that most people agree with me NOW rather than then?
Then TERA is touted as the next "AwesomeSaucery" to hit the market, and I also post thought out criticisms about the product only to be ragged on yet again. Only to find out after the launch that quite a few agree with most of my points, yet again.
Mind you every game should have a fair amount of criticism to give people a fair shake as to what the product actually is without bias or spin from the paid-off media. So there will NEVER be a "perfect" game that should never be criticized. People seem to have the wrong idea that to give criticism means you're trolling or "Hating" on a product, and that is quite simply not true.
All of the points the OP brought up I've brought up with SWTOR, TERA, RIFT, etc and I was shot down at the time (I believe the "Hype Monster" had many in its grasp).
So now GW2 & TSW are coming around the corner and the amount of bias & hype revolving around those products are like a twin-pulsar cluster that will fry you before you could even get close enough to form an opinion. TSW is a themepark by design, and GW2 is a SandPark, yet both are being hailed in their own respects as untouchables.
What exactly is going on with our community here O_o?
And yet, to some extent, critisism is the mark of success. Just look at how much stir WoW caused.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
The genre are converging. Diablo 3 has MMO elements (AH, crafting). Many MMOs are more like Diablo than open world games (DDO, WOW LFD/LFR, ....)
Nothing is converging here. You're trying to read conspiracy-like developments into something that's simply side effects of unrelated things. DDO (and, I presume, LotR. Both Turbine. Both F2P. Probably is a company issue, again) is not a new game. You can't say something is converging when it's been like that for ages.
WoW was based off of DII because they were made by the same company. DIII borrows from WoW because they were made by the same company. That's the main reason you're seeing similarities between them, but they are not related to the MMO market at large. Ironically, WoW is still far more world-tailored MMO than most others (compare with Rift).
There's nothing MMO about the AH or crafting. Nothing whatsoever. DII had trading, and crafting.
And Diablo 3 has a lot of the player base as MMO/WOW. How many WOW players are playing D3? At least 1.2M.
Again, this is a special case. The whole DII-WoW-DIII issue is a specifically Blizzard issue. Being what it is, Blizzard influences its other titles, as well as clones. Games caught outside, though, do not particularly care (Guild Wars 2 is pushing the world and is not as concerned with "endgame"). You should be looking at new games coming out and I personally see a moving away from lobby in MMO's and more advanced worlds because people seem sick of it. There's nothing to be said on the lobby. It's nothing new, it's been done, many, many times, it was the staple of multiplayer games for the last 20 years. Non-lobby is actually the new wave. GW is moving from lobby to world. TSW cares about the world. MoP has tons of elements for the world. Even Rift, as end-gamish as it is, had all sorts of random crap done for the world.
The point is that a well made lobby-based co-op ARPG can be as successful, if not MORE successful (D3 is prob more successful in terms of player numbers & revenue than 95% of the MMOs) than a traditional virtual world MMO.
This is a vastly unfounded conclusion because WoW's and DIII's popularity is 95% tied to Blizzard itself and the popularity of the prequels and the game worlds generated by the company (i.e., WCIII). Nobody in their right mind should look at a Blizzard product as proof of anything other than that Blizzard knows how to make stuff sell. Everybody hurt themselves on WoW already, was that not enoguh? Did any WoW clone even remotely approach WoW?
The point is that Blizzard sells games. The end.
You are making the same mistake as every WoW cloner currently in the industry. You think that because some company got a lot of players by doing X, you must also do X to get a lot of players. That is not the case. You get a lot of players when you create a solid product (you can harp on Blizz games all you want, but they are not garbage), especially when you tailor that product towards a more or less casual audience + you have help from previous titles' popularity + good marketing.
The fact that ARPGs, or any other genre, can be successful is most defintiely not a mystery. GW1 was an instanced lobby game of which you speak of and was very successful, and GW1 came out quite a long time ago, so doesn't really indicate any sort of recent trend. The most bought game out there is Sims... CoD is an FPS. And ARPG's that do not tailor towards a casual audience will not do very well. Wait and see how well Path of Exile does, even though it's an F2P game. PoE has "MMO elements", btw. Let's see how that goes.
It's also why sandboxes keep "failing". The message with the sandboxes is not that there's anything wrong with a sandbox. Just like the failure of Hellgate: London doesn't indicate 3rd person ARPG's with skils are doomed to fail. Those failures mean the game was not made, tailored, sold, marketed, etc., correctly. That's all it really means. Outside of that, people seem to be willing to play pretty much anything. There's no genre that had no success.
It's also why sandboxes keep "failing". The message with the sandboxes is not that there's anything wrong with a sandbox. Just like the failure of Hellgate: London doesn't indicate 3rd person ARPG's with skils are doomed to fail. Those failures mean the game was not made, tailored, sold, marketed, etc., correctly. That's all it really means. Outside of that, people seem to be willing to play pretty much anything. There's no genre that had no success.
This argument is only true if there is *some* success in the genre. The most successful sandbox is Eve which has a pantry of 350k subs. Some until there is a successful game (unlike the ARPG genre), i just don't buy sandbox MMO as a good game genre.
Incidentally, if you look at graphical adventure, there is no more successful in the genre. When is the last time a graphical point-n-click adventure sells a million copies? All the dev is in indie land now. So no .. not all genre are successful.
So now GW2 & TSW are coming around the corner and the amount of bias & hype revolving around those products are like a twin-pulsar cluster that will fry you before you could even get close enough to form an opinion. TSW is a themepark by design, and GW2 is a SandPark, yet both are being hailed in their own respects as untouchables.
I can't say anything on TSW as I haven't played or really seen it, but it is foolish to compare GW2 development to SW:TOR development. They're fundamentally different and are basically going in opposite directions. Whether something is a themepark or sandbox is largely irrelevant. You (and the rest of this thread, for that matter) are concentrating too much on these two concepts when they're really not the issue. Even in the most precise of genres you can have tons of variations. There's more variation between Diablo II and all of its "clones" than there is between WoW and all the MMORPG's that pretend not to be cloning it. I mean that Titan Quest is more different from Diablo II than SW:TOR is from WoW. That's how bad the cloning is atm.
This argument is only true if there is *some* success in the genre. The most successful sandbox is Eve which has a pantry of 350k subs. Some until there is a successful game (unlike the ARPG genre), i just don't buy sandbox MMO as a good game genre.
Incidentally, if you look at graphical adventure, there is no more successful in the genre. When is the last time a graphical point-n-click adventure sells a million copies? All the dev is in indie land now. So no .. not all genre are successful.
I don't believe it can be true or false due to plain old lack of information.
I'm not going to be convinced sandboxes can't be successful until I see a properly done sanbox. That means:
a) it's a well done game. Not a game with meager amounts of content expecting players to do everything;
b) it's tailored towards casuals. The last sandbox I heard of that was casual was A Tale in the Desert.
Most games do not sell millions of copies. I largely consider that OK. Millions is a bit much.
Certainly, all the games in the past few years who sold tons were using updated paradigms. There have been no old school games recently like that. Minecraft certainly never came out. /sarcasm Nor did the other two games. Nope. /sarcasm
The amount of untapped potential on the market is staggering. The market lacks these among games that have been created in the past but of which the market is currently empty or only has bad titles (or dying sequels):
- random map / AI RTS; Kohan/SoaSE style RTS; builder RTS died recently;
- Hack&Slash was deeply desaturated until Diablo III came out. There was no good Hack&Slash title since Diablo II and Nox; multiplayer Hack&Slash is still empty and DIII is not filling that;
- MMO, of course. This is a walking joke of untapped potential;
- graphic adventure is MOST CERTAINLY untapped. Too bad nobody made a good one since like Mirror I think. Not sure. My mom is nuts about those games, any time any comes out she jumps at them like crazy but even she said they suck lately, which they do; also, I have a few friends who won't shut up about Penumbra/Amnesia (some of us prefer something... more family-friendly);
- various old school genres I'm scarecely familiar with but that are getting tapped pretty effectively by a lot of indie companies getting huge sales atm.
I can assure you, there are still plenty of buyers for these kinds of games. Some of them occassionally get tapped and poked by the market here and there but these subgenres remain largely ignored and once in a blue moon someone makes a successful game and everyone is surprised.
Originally posted by nariusseldonThis argument is only true if there is *some* success in the genre. The most successful sandbox is Eve which has a pantry of 350k subs. Some until there is a successful game (unlike the ARPG genre), i just don't buy sandbox MMO as a good game genre.Incidentally, if you look at graphical adventure, there is no more successful in the genre. When is the last time a graphical point-n-click adventure sells a million copies? All the dev is in indie land now. So no .. not all genre are successful.
I don't believe it can be true or false due to plain old lack of information.
I'm not going to be convinced sandboxes can't be successful until I see a properly done sanbox. That means:
a) it's a well done game. Not a game with meager amounts of content expecting players to do everything;
b) it's tailored towards casuals. The last sandbox I heard of that was casual was A Tale in the Desert.
Most games do not sell millions of copies. I largely consider that OK. Millions is a bit much.
Certainly, all the games in the past few years who sold tons were using updated paradigms. There have been no old school games recently like that. Minecraft certainly never came out. /sarcasm Nor did the other two games. Nope. /sarcasm
The amount of untapped potential on the market is staggering. The market lacks these among games that have been created in the past but of which the market is currently empty or only has bad titles (or dying sequels):
- random map / AI RTS; Kohan/SoaSE style RTS; builder RTS died recently;
- Hack&Slash was deeply desaturated until Diablo III came out. There was no good Hack&Slash title since Diablo II and Nox; multiplayer Hack&Slash is still empty and DIII is not filling that;
- MMO, of course. This is a walking joke of untapped potential;
- graphic adventure is MOST CERTAINLY untapped. Too bad nobody made a good one since like Mirror I think. Not sure. My mom is nuts about those games, any time any comes out she jumps at them like crazy but even she said they suck lately, which they do;
- various old school genres I'm scarecely familiar with but that are getting tapped pretty effectively by a lot of indie companies getting huge sales atm.
I can assure you, there are still plenty of buyers for these kinds of games. Some of them occassionally get tapped and poked by the market here and there but these subgenres remain largely ignored and once in a blue moon someone makes a successful game and everyone is surprised.
Unlike most of the games you've listed, MMORPG don't really have the option of being developed on a small scale with a shoestring budget. It's just too expensive. Ten Million Dollars Minimum expensive.
That puts it out of Kickstarter's league. Which means looking for investors, who are going to look at the current market. While theme parks aren't likely to make money like WoW, they'll certainly make more money than Eve + Darkfall + Mortal Online. I can think this because Age of Conan financed The Secret World. Rift financed two other games, both MMOs. WoW could finance small countries. There's just no evidence that "sandbox" + "mmorpg" = $$$ for investors.
As far as games that aren't in the genre, they don't count. Minecraft can only support 3 people per 1Mb/s connection. That means SWToR would require at least 333,333Mb/s to run. It's probably possible to get that connection, but I shudder to think how much it would cost. It's just not the same thing.
** edit ** I think it would benefit theme park games in general if they started incorporating features outside of the "usual" known set of theme park features though. Some sandbox features, some fps features, and even some RTS features. SWToR would have benefited greatly by adding something that wasn't just story on top of a game that was really just a subset of WoW's features.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Unlike most of the games you've listed, MMORPG don't really have the option of being developed on a small scale with a shoestring budget. It's just too expensive. Ten Million Dollars Minimum expensive.
Indie developers typically shouldn't be doing that, anyway... nor were they.
There is CCP, though.
That puts it out of Kickstarter's league.
Funny you should say that, Pathfinder is being developed through Kickstarter.
Which means looking for investors, who are going to look at the current market.
While theme parks aren't likely to make money like WoW, they'll certainly make more money than Eve + Darkfall + Mortal Online. I can think this because Age of Conan financed The Secret World. Rift financed two other games, both MMOs. WoW could finance small countries. There's just no evidence that "sandbox" + "mmorpg" = $$$ for investors.
Refer to my original post. None of your points apply to it. Your whole point is basically "Nobody did it before therefore it won't work". That's a very primitive approach to, well, anything. If everyone thought like you WoW would never exist.
As far as games that aren't in the genre, they don't count.
Um, they do. You weren't talking about MMO in most of your post, you were talking about graphical adventures and untapped markets. Minecraft is an example of someone tapping into a market that nobody else paid attention to. Don't try to switch topics here, you know what I was replying to and you were not talking about MMORPG's.
(by the way, Minecraft was made in Java by some random dude. It would be strange to expect server stability from it. That wasn't the point)
I think it would benefit theme park games in general if they started incorporating features outside of the "usual" known set of theme park features though. Some sandbox features, some fps features, and even some RTS features. SWToR would have benefited greatly by adding something that wasn't just story on top of a game that was really just a subset of WoW's features.
I will only consider this argument once themeparks stop being lame. We'll see where GW2 goes. Generally, I don't see hte point of having a student fail math over and over and make him go take science instead. If the student is bad he is just bad. Same with game companies. If they suck at making games (which they do), they will continue to suck regardless of whether they do themepark or sandpark or w/e because they're still doing it for wrong reasons.
WoW-clones (again, did you even READ any of my posts? My posts are entirely about how the sandbox-themepark distinction is irrelevant; clones and cash grabs is the problem), which are the problem here, may bring "more money" (than what? something that doesn't exist? duh), but they won't give you what you want. And this is not a "how to help companies screw us all over more by earning lots of money on bad products" forum. Of course, the continual mixing up of money, sales, and game quality is really not helpful...
This argument is only true if there is *some* success in the genre. The most successful sandbox is Eve which has a pantry of 350k subs. Some until there is a successful game (unlike the ARPG genre), i just don't buy sandbox MMO as a good game genre.
Incidentally, if you look at graphical adventure, there is no more successful in the genre. When is the last time a graphical point-n-click adventure sells a million copies? All the dev is in indie land now. So no .. not all genre are successful.
Runescape is still here, 500k-1m subs, ~2m free players
As for converging from your previous post, yes they are, D3 and wow specifically, not because of some evolution to be better or improving of some "moment-to-monet gameplay", whatever that may be, but because blizz is either unable or unwilling to create something else than what has been in their eyes proven as succesfull, imo enrage timers, bosses resetting and a wishy washy gear system do not belong in a diablo game.
Themeparks have allways been the most common MMO type. I dont think there are any more or any fewer themeparks versus other types. The main problem is likely that there are so few decent non-themepark type MMO's - IE the ones that have been made recently suck so bad few people pay attention to them.
Everything goes in a cycle though and at some point a talented group will come together and make a good non-themepark MMO.
As for converging from your previous post, yes they are, D3 and wow specifically, not because of some evolution to be better or improving of some "moment-to-monet gameplay", whatever that may be, but because blizz is either unable or unwilling to create something else than what has been in their eyes proven as succesfull, imo enrage timers, bosses resetting and a wishy washy gear system do not belong in a diablo game.
Well, you can't argue with results. Blizz does know how to make successful games. There is nothing wrong with enrage timers (is that a first in WOW?), bosses resetting (to avoid zerging) if they get the job done.
And what is wrong with D3 gear system? It is not that different than the D2 system with random stats and effects.
As for converging from your previous post, yes they are, D3 and wow specifically, not because of some evolution to be better or improving of some "moment-to-monet gameplay", whatever that may be, but because blizz is either unable or unwilling to create something else than what has been in their eyes proven as succesfull, imo enrage timers, bosses resetting and a wishy washy gear system do not belong in a diablo game.
Well, you can't argue with results. Blizz does know how to make successful games. There is nothing wrong with enrage timers (is that a first in WOW?), bosses resetting (to avoid zerging) if they get the job done.
And what is wrong with D3 gear system? It is not that different than the D2 system with random stats and effects.
There are levels of successful, while these games are successful, they are not warcraft, vanilla wow, diablo 2, very different games from each other and from now, blizz didnt settle for "good enough" back then (or they didnt know they could settle ). Its like lord John Marbury explaining all the variations of cold medicine in the West Wing, all the recipes ending ".. and a shot of whiskey", concluding with "just take the whiskey and you are well on your way".
Enrage timers, probably not first in wow, but probably first in being so widespread outside some gimmick scripted quasi-storytelling encounters. Together with bosses resetting it makes for a tricky system if you consider that you are actually expected, gameplaywise, to kill the same boss (or a random rare pack) hundreds if not thousands of times for less than a meaningful chance of loot, as opposed to wow, where the boss drops always something good (but not always useful to anyone).
As for gear system, in itself there are some minor quirks (like magic effects tied to "base" item level, no more basic gloves with +30 resist, just 1-5 for you; or wizards with 2handed hammers...), some people have problems with legendaries, but the main problem lies with what a particular piece is expected to have to be "good", as in just enabling the player to have a chance to kill something, its tied to the difficulty (ofcourse) and the stat dispersion, gloves in d2 were not really expected to have huge number of stats on them, mostly with attack speed, resists or lifesteal you were "well on your way", these days you will want to have 2 stats, plus resists and some useful secondary attributes on them, the number of affixes has increased, a rare can have around 100 possible affixes, giving you just a 1:5000 - 1:10000 chance just to consider a rare, if it drops or otherwise, crafting, ah.
Enrage timers, probably not first in wow, but probably first in being so widespread outside some gimmick scripted quasi-storytelling encounters. Together with bosses resetting it makes for a tricky system if you consider that you are actually expected, gameplaywise, to kill the same boss (or a random rare pack) hundreds if not thousands of times for less than a meaningful chance of loot, as opposed to wow, where the boss drops always something good (but not always useful to anyone).
It is set up that way obviously so that people cannot just die, respawn and zerg the boss (hence reseting). Otherwise, people will complain about it being "too easy".
As for gear system, in itself there are some minor quirks (like magic effects tied to "base" item level, no more basic gloves with +30 resist, just 1-5 for you; or wizards with 2handed hammers...), some people have problems with legendaries, but the main problem lies with what a particular piece is expected to have to be "good", as in just enabling the player to have a chance to kill something, its tied to the difficulty (ofcourse) and the stat dispersion, gloves in d2 were not really expected to have huge number of stats on them, mostly with attack speed, resists or lifesteal you were "well on your way", these days you will want to have 2 stats, plus resists and some useful secondary attributes on them, the number of affixes has increased, a rare can have around 100 possible affixes, giving you just a 1:5000 - 1:10000 chance just to consider a rare, if it drops or otherwise, crafting, ah.
Since gear drop so often, i don't see the rare "good" drop as a bad thing. In fact, AH is full of cheap good upgrades (prob until later half of Hell/INFERNO). In fact, the upgrade frequencies in Diablo 3 is way HIGHER than a MMO like WOW which a piece can take a week to get.
Originally posted by lizardbonesUnlike most of the games you've listed, MMORPG don't really have the option of being developed on a small scale with a shoestring budget. It's just too expensive. Ten Million Dollars Minimum expensive.
Indie developers typically shouldn't be doing that, anyway... nor were they.
There is CCP, though.
That puts it out of Kickstarter's league.
Funny you should say that, Pathfinder is being developed through Kickstarter.
Which means looking for investors, who are going to look at the current market.
While theme parks aren't likely to make money like WoW, they'll certainly make more money than Eve + Darkfall + Mortal Online. I can think this because Age of Conan financed The Secret World. Rift financed two other games, both MMOs. WoW could finance small countries. There's just no evidence that "sandbox" + "mmorpg" = $$$ for investors.
Refer to my original post. None of your points apply to it. Your whole point is basically "Nobody did it before therefore it won't work". That's a very primitive approach to, well, anything. If everyone thought like you WoW would never exist. As far as games that aren't in the genre, they don't count.
Um, they do. You weren't talking about MMO in most of your post, you were talking about graphical adventures and untapped markets. Minecraft is an example of someone tapping into a market that nobody else paid attention to. Don't try to switch topics here, you know what I was replying to and you were not talking about MMORPG's.
(by the way, Minecraft was made in Java by some random dude. It would be strange to expect server stability from it. That wasn't the point)
I think it would benefit theme park games in general if they started incorporating features outside of the "usual" known set of theme park features though. Some sandbox features, some fps features, and even some RTS features. SWToR would have benefited greatly by adding something that wasn't just story on top of a game that was really just a subset of WoW's features.
I will only consider this argument once themeparks stop being lame. We'll see where GW2 goes. Generally, I don't see hte point of having a student fail math over and over and make him go take science instead. If the student is bad he is just bad. Same with game companies. If they suck at making games (which they do), they will continue to suck regardless of whether they do themepark or sandpark or w/e because they're still doing it for wrong reasons.
WoW-clones (again, did you even READ any of my posts? My posts are entirely about how the sandbox-themepark distinction is irrelevant; clones and cash grabs is the problem), which are the problem here, may bring "more money" (than what? something that doesn't exist? duh), but they won't give you what you want. And this is not a "how to help companies screw us all over more by earning lots of money on bad products" forum. Of course, the continual mixing up of money, sales, and game quality is really not helpful...
Pathfinder is developing a Tech Demo. This is just to try and get investors. Ditto for Embers of Caerus(sp). They're not developing MMORPG that anyone can play using Kickstarter, they're just trying to get to the point that they can ask for the millions of dollars it takes to develop an MMORPG.
Investors will only take untested chances when there's no history to analyze. The MMORPG genre no longer exists in a vacuum...there is now a history for investors to review.
Investors will never invest in something that, from their perspective, has shown a history of failure. MMORPG with Sandbox features have shown a history of failure from investors perspectives. Eve is an investment failure; it has taken far too long to get to a 'break even' state. Dominus is an investment failure. Darkfall, Mortal Online are both investment failures. There is nothing else. There is not one single MMORPG based on sandbox features that's an investment success. There are more than zero MMORPG based on themepark features that are investment successes so that's where the money is going to go.
My point with Minecraft was that it doesn't matter what games that aren't MMORPG do to be successful...they aren't MMORPG. The environment for non-MMORPG is different, the development process is different and the time frames involved in developing and releasing the games are different. The scale of everything involved in getting an MMORPG off the ground dwarfs everything else.
The distinction between "sandbox" and "theme park" exists, and it matters to investors because it makes a difference in the ability of games to make money. Invest in a game based on the "theme park" feature set and investors are more likely to make money. Invest in a game based on "sandbox" features and the game is more likely to lose money. This isn't a guess, there is history to prove it.
** edit ** The method indie games use to find untapped markets can't be used with MMORPG. There's a new indie game on Steam every week. Eventually one of them is going to find an untapped market. You can't do that with MMORPG. The whole indie just doesn't apply.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Comments
Ad which ones did, which ones didnt? Because, regarding of old mmos, even vanilla wow is nowadays a old mmo, it had more interesting factions, resists played a a role, enchanting was more interesting, crafting played a much bigger role...
The half assed comes from the requirements and the impact, if you "grind" a faction to full in one day and all you get from it is something which you outleveled a week ago, it will feel half-assed, like player housing where you can put just a table and a chair into one room and choose the color of the curtains, compare that to eq2.
This is how modern mmos unfortunately do most of these things (obviously, there is a huge amount of people which would instantly quit, if they made a mistake choosing a faction, lets just let them use a tabard and enable them to do all to full).
Flame on!
Well, from his comments and features listed I assume he meant MMO's before WoW as the old ones, and the MMO's since WoW as the new ones. In any case, what I said still stands, most of the old MMO's incl EQ, DAoC and AC didn't have player housing just to use one feature as an example
Well, every game had something, that not every feature was in every game is of little importance (but feel free to explain why you feel it is relevant), its just a list of features which prolonged gameplay and were either dropped or made extremely simple. Thats all.
Flame on!
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Shrug. If the majority of old MMO's didn't have those features while newer MMO's do have them, then they weren't really a dominant trend in those old MMO's, and aren't really gone or dropped from the new MMO's. Just saying. 'every game has something', sure, that applies to the old MMO's as well as the new MMO's.
You could have saved yourself some time and just said, "I don't care about any of this stuff."
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
Tbh, I'm not really sure.
I loved WoW but I loved it for all the stuff nobody else did. I never raided and rarely went into instances. Yet, I wondered what the purpose of the world was.
To the tired "game starts at max level" my response always was "then why have anything else".
I never figured out that paradox, my theory is that a huge chunk of the WoW playerbase are actually world-dwellers and it earns WoW tons of subscribers.
As a new player to WoW I loved all sorts of random stuff WoW used to have, like factions, or the fact that you had to train your weapons. I think you underestimate new players / casuals.
The people who got trophies are min-maxers, silly. Casuals don't care about trophies... or gear, or "content" or "endgame" or "progression". People who care about that are, by definition, not casual. We go fishing and do quests and walk around and crap, and then have to suffer various namecalling where everyone from battle.net forums to mmorpg.com thinks we're either noobs, idiots, kids in basements, or ruiners of games...
That is easy to explain.
1) Flying mounts are added in BC.
2) LFD/LFR is added MUCH later *after* the world is created.
Blizzard did NOT know that their players want a lobby game until much later. Look at Diablo 3. They make it with some MMO features (AH, crafting) and did not go the full MMO route because they know that there is no point to a world.
"I remember a time when people had to plan a dungeon raid. Run ON FOOT across the world fighting along the way to a dungeon to kill a boss that only spawns every 2 days just for a sword drop, not tokens or random loot." .. that is precisely FEW players ever want to do. Too much boring work. Too much commitment. People want to pop in the game and play a while, not living in it.
Or maybe because Diablo III is a sequel to a game of a complete different genre? No, that can't possibly be it.
WoW would fall apart without a world, I assure you.
All i know is that I was ragged on when I posted thought out criticisms about SWTOR pre-release, and 6months later I find out that most people agree with me NOW rather than then?
Then TERA is touted as the next "AwesomeSaucery" to hit the market, and I also post thought out criticisms about the product only to be ragged on yet again. Only to find out after the launch that quite a few agree with most of my points, yet again.
Mind you every game should have a fair amount of criticism to give people a fair shake as to what the product actually is without bias or spin from the paid-off media. So there will NEVER be a "perfect" game that should never be criticized. People seem to have the wrong idea that to give criticism means you're trolling or "Hating" on a product, and that is quite simply not true.
All of the points the OP brought up I've brought up with SWTOR, TERA, RIFT, etc and I was shot down at the time (I believe the "Hype Monster" had many in its grasp).
So now GW2 & TSW are coming around the corner and the amount of bias & hype revolving around those products are like a twin-pulsar cluster that will fry you before you could even get close enough to form an opinion. TSW is a themepark by design, and GW2 is a SandPark, yet both are being hailed in their own respects as untouchables.
What exactly is going on with our community here O_o?
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity:
Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
Would you like a cross? It is THE prop for martyrs.
Taru-Gallante-Blood elf-Elysean-Kelari-Crime Fighting-Imperial Agent
The genre are converging. Diablo 3 has MMO elements (AH, crafting). Many MMOs are more like Diablo than open world games (DDO, WOW LFD/LFR, ....)
And Diablo 3 has a lot of the player base as MMO/WOW. How many WOW players are playing D3? At least 1.2M.
The point is that a well made lobby-based co-op ARPG can be as successful, if not MORE successful (D3 is prob more successful in terms of player numbers & revenue than 95% of the MMOs) than a traditional virtual world MMO.
And yet, to some extent, critisism is the mark of success. Just look at how much stir WoW caused.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
You are making the same mistake as every WoW cloner currently in the industry. You think that because some company got a lot of players by doing X, you must also do X to get a lot of players. That is not the case. You get a lot of players when you create a solid product (you can harp on Blizz games all you want, but they are not garbage), especially when you tailor that product towards a more or less casual audience + you have help from previous titles' popularity + good marketing.
The fact that ARPGs, or any other genre, can be successful is most defintiely not a mystery. GW1 was an instanced lobby game of which you speak of and was very successful, and GW1 came out quite a long time ago, so doesn't really indicate any sort of recent trend. The most bought game out there is Sims... CoD is an FPS. And ARPG's that do not tailor towards a casual audience will not do very well. Wait and see how well Path of Exile does, even though it's an F2P game. PoE has "MMO elements", btw. Let's see how that goes.
It's also why sandboxes keep "failing". The message with the sandboxes is not that there's anything wrong with a sandbox. Just like the failure of Hellgate: London doesn't indicate 3rd person ARPG's with skils are doomed to fail. Those failures mean the game was not made, tailored, sold, marketed, etc., correctly. That's all it really means. Outside of that, people seem to be willing to play pretty much anything. There's no genre that had no success.
This argument is only true if there is *some* success in the genre. The most successful sandbox is Eve which has a pantry of 350k subs. Some until there is a successful game (unlike the ARPG genre), i just don't buy sandbox MMO as a good game genre.
Incidentally, if you look at graphical adventure, there is no more successful in the genre. When is the last time a graphical point-n-click adventure sells a million copies? All the dev is in indie land now. So no .. not all genre are successful.
I can't say anything on TSW as I haven't played or really seen it, but it is foolish to compare GW2 development to SW:TOR development. They're fundamentally different and are basically going in opposite directions. Whether something is a themepark or sandbox is largely irrelevant. You (and the rest of this thread, for that matter) are concentrating too much on these two concepts when they're really not the issue. Even in the most precise of genres you can have tons of variations. There's more variation between Diablo II and all of its "clones" than there is between WoW and all the MMORPG's that pretend not to be cloning it. I mean that Titan Quest is more different from Diablo II than SW:TOR is from WoW. That's how bad the cloning is atm.
I don't believe it can be true or false due to plain old lack of information.
I'm not going to be convinced sandboxes can't be successful until I see a properly done sanbox. That means:
a) it's a well done game. Not a game with meager amounts of content expecting players to do everything;
b) it's tailored towards casuals. The last sandbox I heard of that was casual was A Tale in the Desert.
Most games do not sell millions of copies. I largely consider that OK. Millions is a bit much.
Certainly, all the games in the past few years who sold tons were using updated paradigms. There have been no old school games recently like that. Minecraft certainly never came out. /sarcasm Nor did the other two games. Nope. /sarcasm
The amount of untapped potential on the market is staggering. The market lacks these among games that have been created in the past but of which the market is currently empty or only has bad titles (or dying sequels):
- fantasy/non-war FPS/TPS; melee FPS/TPS; open-world FPS/TPS;
- random map / AI RTS; Kohan/SoaSE style RTS; builder RTS died recently;
- Hack&Slash was deeply desaturated until Diablo III came out. There was no good Hack&Slash title since Diablo II and Nox; multiplayer Hack&Slash is still empty and DIII is not filling that;
- MMO, of course. This is a walking joke of untapped potential;
- graphic adventure is MOST CERTAINLY untapped. Too bad nobody made a good one since like Mirror I think. Not sure. My mom is nuts about those games, any time any comes out she jumps at them like crazy but even she said they suck lately, which they do; also, I have a few friends who won't shut up about Penumbra/Amnesia (some of us prefer something... more family-friendly);
- various old school genres I'm scarecely familiar with but that are getting tapped pretty effectively by a lot of indie companies getting huge sales atm.
I can assure you, there are still plenty of buyers for these kinds of games. Some of them occassionally get tapped and poked by the market here and there but these subgenres remain largely ignored and once in a blue moon someone makes a successful game and everyone is surprised.
Unlike most of the games you've listed, MMORPG don't really have the option of being developed on a small scale with a shoestring budget. It's just too expensive. Ten Million Dollars Minimum expensive.
That puts it out of Kickstarter's league. Which means looking for investors, who are going to look at the current market. While theme parks aren't likely to make money like WoW, they'll certainly make more money than Eve + Darkfall + Mortal Online. I can think this because Age of Conan financed The Secret World. Rift financed two other games, both MMOs. WoW could finance small countries. There's just no evidence that "sandbox" + "mmorpg" = $$$ for investors.
As far as games that aren't in the genre, they don't count. Minecraft can only support 3 people per 1Mb/s connection. That means SWToR would require at least 333,333Mb/s to run. It's probably possible to get that connection, but I shudder to think how much it would cost. It's just not the same thing.
** edit **
I think it would benefit theme park games in general if they started incorporating features outside of the "usual" known set of theme park features though. Some sandbox features, some fps features, and even some RTS features. SWToR would have benefited greatly by adding something that wasn't just story on top of a game that was really just a subset of WoW's features.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Runescape is still here, 500k-1m subs, ~2m free players
As for converging from your previous post, yes they are, D3 and wow specifically, not because of some evolution to be better or improving of some "moment-to-monet gameplay", whatever that may be, but because blizz is either unable or unwilling to create something else than what has been in their eyes proven as succesfull, imo enrage timers, bosses resetting and a wishy washy gear system do not belong in a diablo game.
Flame on!
Themeparks have allways been the most common MMO type. I dont think there are any more or any fewer themeparks versus other types. The main problem is likely that there are so few decent non-themepark type MMO's - IE the ones that have been made recently suck so bad few people pay attention to them.
Everything goes in a cycle though and at some point a talented group will come together and make a good non-themepark MMO.
Well, you can't argue with results. Blizz does know how to make successful games. There is nothing wrong with enrage timers (is that a first in WOW?), bosses resetting (to avoid zerging) if they get the job done.
And what is wrong with D3 gear system? It is not that different than the D2 system with random stats and effects.
There are levels of successful, while these games are successful, they are not warcraft, vanilla wow, diablo 2, very different games from each other and from now, blizz didnt settle for "good enough" back then (or they didnt know they could settle
). Its like lord John Marbury explaining all the variations of cold medicine in the West Wing, all the recipes ending ".. and a shot of whiskey", concluding with "just take the whiskey and you are well on your way". 
Enrage timers, probably not first in wow, but probably first in being so widespread outside some gimmick scripted quasi-storytelling encounters. Together with bosses resetting it makes for a tricky system if you consider that you are actually expected, gameplaywise, to kill the same boss (or a random rare pack) hundreds if not thousands of times for less than a meaningful chance of loot, as opposed to wow, where the boss drops always something good (but not always useful to anyone).
As for gear system, in itself there are some minor quirks (like magic effects tied to "base" item level, no more basic gloves with +30 resist, just 1-5 for you; or wizards with 2handed hammers...), some people have problems with legendaries, but the main problem lies with what a particular piece is expected to have to be "good", as in just enabling the player to have a chance to kill something, its tied to the difficulty (ofcourse) and the stat dispersion, gloves in d2 were not really expected to have huge number of stats on them, mostly with attack speed, resists or lifesteal you were "well on your way", these days you will want to have 2 stats, plus resists and some useful secondary attributes on them, the number of affixes has increased, a rare can have around 100 possible affixes, giving you just a 1:5000 - 1:10000 chance just to consider a rare, if it drops or otherwise, crafting, ah.
Flame on!
Pathfinder is developing a Tech Demo. This is just to try and get investors. Ditto for Embers of Caerus(sp). They're not developing MMORPG that anyone can play using Kickstarter, they're just trying to get to the point that they can ask for the millions of dollars it takes to develop an MMORPG.
Investors will only take untested chances when there's no history to analyze. The MMORPG genre no longer exists in a vacuum...there is now a history for investors to review.
Investors will never invest in something that, from their perspective, has shown a history of failure. MMORPG with Sandbox features have shown a history of failure from investors perspectives. Eve is an investment failure; it has taken far too long to get to a 'break even' state. Dominus is an investment failure. Darkfall, Mortal Online are both investment failures. There is nothing else. There is not one single MMORPG based on sandbox features that's an investment success. There are more than zero MMORPG based on themepark features that are investment successes so that's where the money is going to go.
My point with Minecraft was that it doesn't matter what games that aren't MMORPG do to be successful...they aren't MMORPG. The environment for non-MMORPG is different, the development process is different and the time frames involved in developing and releasing the games are different. The scale of everything involved in getting an MMORPG off the ground dwarfs everything else.
The distinction between "sandbox" and "theme park" exists, and it matters to investors because it makes a difference in the ability of games to make money. Invest in a game based on the "theme park" feature set and investors are more likely to make money. Invest in a game based on "sandbox" features and the game is more likely to lose money. This isn't a guess, there is history to prove it.
** edit **
The method indie games use to find untapped markets can't be used with MMORPG. There's a new indie game on Steam every week. Eventually one of them is going to find an untapped market. You can't do that with MMORPG. The whole indie just doesn't apply.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.