What Truly has gone wrong with MMO's

Snakex

It is community that makes an MMO, Community > the game itself, to a degree.

I dont very much want to but, i will be using World of Warcraft as an example.

So now who remembers Vinillia WoW? Show of hands? Ok you remember those generally good days, even Burning Crusade was fun. Why was it fun? Same game, Same Shit, Same Grind? Was it not the community, the rivalry, the EPEEN, the lets work togeather and complete this raid to say, "Yes thats right We, the guild did it. Yes that guildy over there, iv known him/her for X amount of months, yes my guild does reconize my name when i go into vent/mumble/teamspeak. Yes i am not a stranger to my guild and my sever."

Why is WoW dieing? Why is WoW loosing subs? its still the same game, with a little bit of new flavor to it, not to much but general concept is there? Oh what the community is shit now and we got gold farmers using Trade chat more then the acutal population? Intresting.....  You see games like WoW, Guild Wars, Rift, basicly MMO's in general, they require a Community to be intact to be truly fun, where when u log on the laughs, nerd ragin, and what not keep rolling.

I hate to point fingers, or use specific names but, WoW One of  the games that made PC gamers, an online community feel so closly to each other, like friends.(of course we have EQ,UO,ect) Is now the game that killed it. WoW...Blizzard.......Activision-Blizzard has inflicted a rising of more then just MMO PC gamers. We now have Console gamers, the Farmville Junkies, Myspace/Facebook junkies, your casual gamers, the After Work gamers, the games now are inviting every person reguardless of what you do or are into their games, MMO's are a Niche based; companies are trying to destroy that Niche and to expand them for Profit but blind to the fact that it is destroying the longtivity of it.

Themepark MMO's have been milked dry to the bitter end. People keep trying to make WoW/EQ Clone MMO's, its not that the game is bad, for example Rift, not a bad game at all, why isnt it doing so good in Population? Because the genre is milked to the bitter end. Hence why we are having a sandbox uprising..... the beauty of sandbox is that if not done right it does eat itself alive. Gamers should be making games, not companies, not a man/female in a suit, Fuck that. Gamers should make games, if someone in the dev team can not answer "WTF is a Lan Party?" then he or she should not be a dev to any MMO because obviously they havent imersed themselves into online gaming enough. But maybe one day they will.

Hence, in conclusion, Gamers make games, Company people stay out of the Dev team.

Realize rehashing already used shit is not Innovative, Milk Chocolate and Dark Chocolate is still Choclate. Almond Choclate is innovate to a dagree.

Sour patch kids is fuckin Innovate ok, so now then,

Devs need to make the game that is necessary, and let people find themselves in the game, not have devs sacrifce game functions to expand the niche. Back in Vinillia, lvling was for the casuals, End game was for the hard core, pvp was for those with limited time (in WoW essence). And the Feeling of Reward was greater.

Dev's....Stop looking for a fucking profit and make a damn game not a fucking payroll. Stfu and get back to the drawing boards. You know why, because Runes of Magic is not a fucking Next Gen Game.

Yes devs do need to eat too, but im sure back in Vinillia and the creaters of Darkfall are still fine and eating well, i mean look at Tasos Flambourgas, hes buff as fuck and darkfall aint doin so hot right now. They forget that their game doesnt need to be the next 10mil+ member game.

Thank you, come again.

 

Honorable mention to Eve Online and Darkfall online for Keeping it real. Sorry if i failed to mention any other games that need to be mentioned.

P.S- Archeage, The Repopulation, (Possibly) Wildstar, Embers of Caerus, Origins of Malu. You do have a chance of making yourself a name and keeping it real. If you so choose to.

kaiser3282

I agree that community makes a big difference in the enjoyment and longevity of games. I wish more games would implement actually community based features. Im not talking about things like forced grouping. Im talking stuff like politics

Take RF Online for example. Shitty game. Pretty much complete shit. Shitty grind. Shitty graphics. Shitty P2W. Shitty staff / devs. But it had 2 things that, all shitiness aside, made it one of the most enjoyable games Ive played and became extremely heavily involved in ove rthe years including becoming a co-owner, dev, and head GM of a pricvate server for it.

Thoese 2 things are:

3 way racial conflict in an open PvP setting - Not only was there tons of coordinationa nd cooperation amongst your race of choice in the open world with bothr aiding enemy settlements and XP parties, but also in repelling the raiders. There was also the 3x daily "Chip Wars" which pitted every player in the game against eachother in one zone for a massive 3 way battle which gave your race buffs until the next war, debuffs to the losing races, and access to the mines to get upgrading materials for equipment for the winning race.

Player made government - Each week there were elections held for each race. The top spot was the Race Leader position, then underneath that were 2 people in each of 4 different postions, making a total of 9 players leading the race. The Race Leader as well as 1 of each of the 4 positions below him were elected by the players. The remaining 4 were appointed directly by the Race Leader. What this system brought to the game was an environment where things like being a very good player, being very helpful (through helping people get gear, running XP farming parties to help people level, and constantly PvPing to repel invaders or keeping pressure on the enemy zones to stop them from getting stronger), and being a good leader & tactician were very important to the game. Being an Archon (which is what they refer to the council/leaders of each race as) required you getting hundreds of players in your race to all work together towards common goals, and also required you being able to coordinate teams on multiple fronts by communicating with and paying attention to other players. It created a place where pretty much everyone knew everyone else, knew their capabilities, knew their methods and leadership effectiveness, etc. Even now, years later, myself and other previous archons can go either onto retail or onto any of the various private servers and people recognize our names from leading them in the past and are always happy to see us back to take the lead again. As I said. Shitty game. But this environment made it one of my favorite games for years due to the tight knit community.

If more games had a bit of the 2 features above, I think we would see a lot more tight knit and long lasting communities.