Whatever the Next Big Thing is, the piranhas will swarm to level cap, decide the game sucks after skipping all the content, strut about smugly assuring each other that they are right that it never had a hope to be any good, and kill it in the game press by sheer consensus.
I'll be waiting for NeverWinter. Forgotten Realms has yet to be implemented in an mmo, and that carries alot of weight for any PnP players. That and the fact they can make their own dungeons, well...should be interesting in the least.
Elder Scrolls Online COULD have been the next big thing, if they'd done it right, but right now, there's no clear gem on the horizon.
TESO is a huge pile of fetid cash-grabbing garbage, the way they have proposed it. If they totally start over with their combat, graphics, pvp mechanics, faction mechanics, add housing, etc MAYBE they will have a chance, but right now all they can hope for is a couple thousand DAOC fans might play it for a few months for the RvR, but TES fans will stay the hell away and MMO nomads will move on after a month.
DF:UW looks interesting. Played and loved DF in concept, but there were a lot of problems. If they've fixed them, great, if not, boo.
Planetside 2 is a TON of fun but I doubt will revolutionize anything or even be that big.
Played Neverwinter at E3 and while the demo was fun, the complete lack of PvP and a heavily instanced world (similar to DDO) is going to kill it for a lot of people. The player-made content angle is interesting though.
Archeage is getting a lot of hype but the interface and graphical style alone make my eyes vomit.
Everquest 3? Not much is known but if promises are upheld, something SOE is at least attempting to do nowadays, it could be a beacon of light.
Then there's the biggest elephant in the room, aptly named Titan. If Blizzard is smart, they will shut down WoW 1 day after Titan releases and give WoW vets huge bonuses in the new game. If they do that, Titan will be the winner, aolthough another decade dominated by Blizzard's insidious design philosophies that promote addiction rather than immersion, I'm not sure if the MMO business will survive that.
As for TheWarZ, it is bad game, hands down. It will not find traction. We also don't know what DayZ will be like when finally released, since all we have to go on is the alpha of a mod for a four-year-old game.
Right now it is a hypeless time, which is bad for the Website I assume. People will splt over whatever of the last big releases they like most or jump between them. Planetside 2 is a big release coming, but doubtly a mass market game. The War Z is certainly not. Elder Scrolls Online has the brand going for it, World of Darkness the Vampire theme and a couple of Sandboxes to come, like Arch Age are eagerly anticipated by the Star Wars Galaxies veterans...
But lets face it the only game that will have the impact, hype and numbers will be Blizzards WoW successor. If it will be brilliant, a piece of shit, or somewhere in between (like Diablo 3) only time will tell.
Regarding the investment problem into fresh stuff, after Funcoms financial failure with The Secret World, any Suit will be very carful how far away from popular paths they will let a game strife after putting money down on it. I think there won't be much innovation combined with production value. Those wo things will go seperate ways for a while...
I definatley think Neverwinter will surprise alot of people, i dont know where u gott warz from,must be somthing you are personally excited for because i have ALMOST heard nothing about it and follow these forums and many others daily.
If the war z is the next big thing, it is a sad day for mmo's. The vid's on youtube look pretty cheesy so far. Dayz was better than what I have seen, even with it being a mod on a old arma engine.
I think we've definitely passed the hype zone though.
Are you kidding? The next over-hyped fail project is ALWAYS around the corner.
The title of this thread proves it lol.
There will be always failures, so many people simply need them, they feed on them, they are not happy if something does not fail ... and if it does not fail on its own, they will do whatever is humanly possible to make them fail. But is not only gaming, haters are happy with anything that goes wrong, if not, they will willingly help.
TSW will be my "next big MMO" for a while. I'm hoping we will see a real MMOFPS in the near future. PS2 isn't it. Maybe Trion can pull it off with Defiance.
^this -- TSW, and let me add World of Darkness. Perhaps TItan
BoP and end-game crafted gear. You also must have the profession in order to use the items. That’s the only way to make proffs matters.
Open world PvP with great rewards. Not server rewards but personal (items, rep, achievs or whatever)
I don’t care if it will be DE’s or Quest Hubs. I care about the end game system. I will lvl up, for lets say a week, a month max? But I ll play my char at max lvl every day for months, so I don’t care that much about lvling.
No dailies
No loading screens / teleports / instanced map
Personal / guild housing, but visit able by others
No flying mounts. Ground only
Some kind of a ladder in both PvP / PvE.
More than 2 factions with separate starting areas.
Separate gear for separate players. A skilled Raider or PvP’er must be recognizable by his gear too.
Make guilds matter more. Give more to the ppl that are loyal and participate in their guilds events
No LFR. Maybe a looking for dungeon / party tool only
Don’t destroy map zones. Don’t let ppl to just pass an area while lvling and never visit it again. It’s a shame to have a map with 10+ zones and at max lvl use 2-3 of them.
Last but not least, make ppl feel epic. That they have a unique char. Don’t make games so content friendly. Either its dungeons / raids or pvp, let some places be only to those who deserve to reach there. Maybe it sounds elitist, but imo it’s the only way to make ppl dreaming about achieve some goals. Let them beat the hard content because they want it, because they tried hard for it and not because they just play many hours. Some times you feel satisfaction just for trying to achieve, even if the result isn’t victory
Funny. Both me and Pokket agree that the next big MMO probably will be a zombie survival MMO... Even funnier is that it is 2 different games.
My guess is Undead labs "Class 4".
Why? I have a couple of reasons.
1. Jeff Strain. The lead designer from Diablo, WC3, GW 1 & 2, and also the guy who originally wanted Blizzard to make a MMO set in the same world as the Warcraft games. He is good and every game he made since Diablo have sold millions of copies.
2. Money. Undead labs are funded by Microsoft and have a good budget.
3. Talent. Undead labs have a rather impressive collection of devs from MMOs and none MMOs.
4. Vision. This game will be really far from both EQ/Wow and FPS games.
The bad thing: The game is made for XBOX, not PC. Undead labs did go out and stated that the forerunner Class 3 also will be released on PC though so there is hope, but this game is made mainly for consoles, not PCs or both and that means the console games strenghts and weaknesses will be in it. However that is also one of the main reasons why I think it will be the next big thing, PC already had its Wow, consoles havnt so there is a huge untapped potential.
BoP and end-game crafted gear. You also must have the profession in order to use the items. That’s the only way to make proffs matters.
Open world PvP with great rewards. Not server rewards but personal (items, rep, achievs or whatever)
I don’t care if it will be DE’s or Quest Hubs. I care about the end game system. I will lvl up, for lets say a week, a month max? But I ll play my char at max lvl every day for months, so I don’t care that much about lvling.
No dailies
No loading screens / teleports / instanced map
Personal / guild housing, but visit able by others
No flying mounts. Ground only
Some kind of a ladder in both PvP / PvE.
More than 2 factions with separate starting areas.
Separate gear for separate players. A skilled Raider or PvP’er must be recognizable by his gear too.
Make guilds matter more. Give more to the ppl that are loyal and participate in their guilds events
No LFR. Maybe a looking for dungeon / party tool only
Don’t destroy map zones. Don’t let ppl to just pass an area while lvling and never visit it again. It’s a shame to have a map with 10+ zones and at max lvl use 2-3 of them.
Last but not least, make ppl feel epic. That they have a unique char. Don’t make games so content friendly. Either its dungeons / raids or pvp, let some places be only to those who deserve to reach there. Maybe it sounds elitist, but imo it’s the only way to make ppl dreaming about achieve some goals. Let them beat the hard content because they want it, because they tried hard for it and not because they just play many hours. Some times you feel satisfaction just for trying to achieve, even if the result isn’t victory
No, it doesnt really "must have" anything except solid programming, it needs to be really fun and great game, that is it.
It mustnt have raids, quests, or be a sandbox or themepark, that is just speculations. I am pretty sure it must differ a lot from what we all played before though.
And it sure as #¤% dont need to be fantasy, even if it might be. It could be modern, historical, space opera, cyberpunk, western or whatever. The type of setting doesnt really matter as long as it is really well made.
No, it doesnt really "must have" anything except solid programming, it needs to be really fun and great game, that is it.
It mustnt have raids, quests, or be a sandbox or themepark, that is just speculations. I am pretty sure it must differ a lot from what we all played before though.
And it sure as #¤% dont need to be fantasy, even if it might be. It could be modern, historical, space opera, cyberpunk, western or whatever. The type of setting doesnt really matter as long as it is really well made.
Atta boy Loke! Shut down someone else for sharing opinions you don't agree with! Yeah! Show us your mmorpg.com spirit!
Good grief, calm down guy. They're just sharing their personal preferences. They're not issuing a mandate.
If someone says "I think the nicest color is blue", are you right on the scene to tell them "No, it isn't"?
What bothers me SO much is that my friends and i used to sit around back around when DAOC came out (we were playing it and EQ1 at the time) discussing how we thought that the MMO market was going to split into a wider diversity of games catering to more specific play styles. I.e. you would have one game for the people who want full on death, loot rights etc, style pvp. One mmo for RVR style pvp, one for people who enjoy raiding and gear progression, one for people who are more story oriented/handheld (i.e. i dont want to make my way i want to be guided through "the content").
Then WOW came out, threw a huge ass wrench into that, and it finally seems like things are going back to how they were progressing pre wow.
But it did become more diverse and evolve, accommodating a wide range of playstyles - you don't seem to accept or acknowledge MMOs outside of the EQ/DAoC/WOW design, so you don't see it.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
No, it doesnt really "must have" anything except solid programming, it needs to be really fun and great game, that is it.
It mustnt have raids, quests, or be a sandbox or themepark, that is just speculations. I am pretty sure it must differ a lot from what we all played before though.
And it sure as #¤% dont need to be fantasy, even if it might be. It could be modern, historical, space opera, cyberpunk, western or whatever. The type of setting doesnt really matter as long as it is really well made.
Atta boy Loke! Shut down someone else for sharing opinions you don't agree with! Yeah! Show us your mmorpg.com spirit!
Good grief, calm down guy. They're just sharing their personal preferences. They're not issuing a mandate.
If someone says "I think the nicest color is blue", are you right on the scene to tell them "No, it isn't"?
Thats the difference between "I want an mmo that has:" and "In order for an MMO to be good it must have:"
What people want / enjoy is different between each person. Wether or not something is "good" isnt as simple as what someone wants in a game. A game can be good even though it doesnt have the features a particular person wants, and it can be bad even if it has those things.
A game could have every feature he listed, but it may be a very broken and buggy game. Is it still a good game? On the other hand a game could run perfectly fine with little to no bugs, but not have the particular features he wants. Does that make it a bad game?
Just look at Xsyon as an example for sandboxes. It has just about everything a sandbox fan wants, but in it's current state it is just a bad game and most sandbox fans would agree. On the other hand there are a lot of other games out there that may not be sandboxes that sandbox fans can still admit are good games.
What he said isn't "I think the nicest color is blue" what he said is "Blue is the only good color. All other colors are bad, just because they arent blue".
It's silly semantics, I know. But its how people interpret things, especially on forums.
What bothers me SO much is that my friends and i used to sit around back around when DAOC came out (we were playing it and EQ1 at the time) discussing how we thought that the MMO market was going to split into a wider diversity of games catering to more specific play styles. I.e. you would have one game for the people who want full on death, loot rights etc, style pvp. One mmo for RVR style pvp, one for people who enjoy raiding and gear progression, one for people who are more story oriented/handheld (i.e. i dont want to make my way i want to be guided through "the content").
Then WOW came out, threw a huge ass wrench into that, and it finally seems like things are going back to how they were progressing pre wow.
But it did become more diverse and evolve, accommodating a wide range of playstyles - you don't seem to accept or acknowledge MMOs outside of the EQ/DAoC/WOW design, so you don't see it.
I think what he is getting at is just the general lack of focus on development and funding of a wider variety of games. Yes there are games that dont follow the norm created by those mentioned games, but they typically dont receive anywhere near the same amount of funding being thrown at most of those games and very few of them can manage to achieve even mild success because they dont have the staff or tools needed to fully realize their dream.
Games like WoW came out, managed to reach enormous success, and all the people with deep pockets to fund a game said "We have to do things like them to be that succesful" instead of realizing "They're already succesful in what they do. We need to do something different and unique to have similar success"
If instead a game like SWG for example had reached the same success as WoW, we would be seeing a market flooded with games similar to SWG instead and fans of themepark EQ / WoW style games would be complaining that theres no good themepark games.
Luckily it seems like after several years of the same recycled crap, some developers / publishers are finally starting to get the hint that they wont out-WoW WoW and we are slowly starting to see an increase in higher quality games that offer something different. No, themeparks won't go away and sandboxes suddenly dominate the market. But we will eventually see more of a balance in the quality and funding of the various types of games instead of like 90% of the market being focused on 1 style.
Things like kickstarter are also becoming more widely used which is an awesome thing. Theres a ton of ideas out there for some really great and original games. But the major funders don't see it as different and original = good. They just care about the safe bet, and so its usually very hard for some of these small teams to get any worthwhile funding. Kickstarter helps these guys out a lot not only with the actual money itself, but also in proving to potential funders that there is a desire for that game and a fanbase willing to support, making them more willing to take a chance on funding the game.
It's just the way the world works. MMOs are no different than any other creation / invention. There have been some truly world changing ideas and inventions created throughout history that, because they were differen than the norm, were considered foolish, risky, and not worth anyones time and money to support. But luckily someone along the way was willing to take a risk with those things and they are now very commonplace throughout the world. We just need people willing to take those same risks on a wider variety of games as well.
Edit: As much as some of us hate them and think they're "ruining gaming", things like Facebook and iPhone apps, games, etc are actually good for us as well. Yes, some of those games are just completely ridiculous and shallow. But with some of them being widely popular, it also kind of opens the eyes of funders to what sort of fame & success can be achieved with what may seem like a very strange and unfamiliar idea and also helps lower the chances that theyw ill tink it too risky to fund someone with those sorts of ideas.
Well there is not much on the horizon for at least the next year as far as I am concered. I see some folks post games that are already out, and shake my head as they failed reading comprehinsion class.
We are talking games in the pipline. Well war-z releazed yesterday so you cant count that one. That only leaves two mmo's that I see in the near future.
Star Citizens they gotten a 125 dollar plegde for the lancer packge. The cleared 800k last night, they need 2 million to get the investors to take a look. We got 23 more days of crowd funding.
Then you have TESO. Well as long as teso is using the hero engine I will ignore that game all together.
Then you have planet-side I played the beta and seen some of the same pvp hacks I saw used in DCUO. No thanks, some folks are going to love the pvp, but that is going to be a niche mmo and honestly it is not an mmo, it kind of reminds me of world of tanks.
So whats left, I don't see anything else, or at least for me.
Before we had years of waiting for Rift, SWOTR, and GW2 all those are now behind us. There really is nothing looming in front of us that says hey look I am going to be the king of games.
I thik a lot of dev houses have gotten sloppy, and they have no clue of what they are doing and what they need to do, the market is becomng stagnant.
No, it doesnt really "must have" anything except solid programming, it needs to be really fun and great game, that is it.
It mustnt have raids, quests, or be a sandbox or themepark, that is just speculations. I am pretty sure it must differ a lot from what we all played before though.
And it sure as #¤% dont need to be fantasy, even if it might be. It could be modern, historical, space opera, cyberpunk, western or whatever. The type of setting doesnt really matter as long as it is really well made.
Atta boy Loke! Shut down someone else for sharing opinions you don't agree with! Yeah! Show us your mmorpg.com spirit!
Good grief, calm down guy. They're just sharing their personal preferences. They're not issuing a mandate.
If someone says "I think the nicest color is blue", are you right on the scene to tell them "No, it isn't"?
That is not at all what I said, I just said that the next MMO doesnt have to have anything besides well programming and good gameplay.
It might have the things described, maybe even all of them but saying that it must have something is a huge misstake.
In fact noone know what the next huge MMO must have, I was not trying to sound like a zealot or anything, but if people actually knew what the next large MMO needed we would already have the game.
I did not say that I didnt think the features on the list were good, I in fact agree that several of them are good (dang, how I hate those dailies) but that does not mean the next MMO must have them.
Thinking that the next big MMO must have a whole bunch of specific features is just as bad as assuming that copying Wow will give you a game as popular,
And even mixing only good features might still create a really crappy game. Chocclate is good, salmon is good, jelly beans is good but if you mix them you probably get something that taste horrible.
As I see it if you want to make a truly great game you first start by creating the world, then you invent the mechanics that makes it feel alive, you dont just copy and paste from different games. That did work with a certain huge game but that was only because few people played a MMO before it. If you decide what features you want first and just flick a world over it instead you get a game like TOR.
Imagine instead of Bioware looking on KOTOR and thinking how they could turn it into a multiplayer game would have looked on the movies and thought about how they could invent a game out of it that were as close to Lucas originakl vision as possible. Not to bash TOR particularly, I just used it as example since it was a recent not so great success, WAR, AoC or a wholebunch of examples would have worked just as well.
Starting by taking a whole bunch of features and making a game out of them is starting from the wrong direction. We could make a list of a thousand great features from MMOs from M59 to GW2 and yet if you added all of them the game would most likely be terrible.
Not many MMOs get my attention anymore. For me personally, the next big MMO I'm looking forward to is Blade & Soul. I've always loved the Korean, grindy MMOs the best.
Comments
Whatever the Next Big Thing is, the piranhas will swarm to level cap, decide the game sucks after skipping all the content, strut about smugly assuring each other that they are right that it never had a hope to be any good, and kill it in the game press by sheer consensus.
We are so doomed.
Elder Scrolls Online COULD have been the next big thing, if they'd done it right, but right now, there's no clear gem on the horizon.
TESO is a huge pile of fetid cash-grabbing garbage, the way they have proposed it. If they totally start over with their combat, graphics, pvp mechanics, faction mechanics, add housing, etc MAYBE they will have a chance, but right now all they can hope for is a couple thousand DAOC fans might play it for a few months for the RvR, but TES fans will stay the hell away and MMO nomads will move on after a month.
DF:UW looks interesting. Played and loved DF in concept, but there were a lot of problems. If they've fixed them, great, if not, boo.
Planetside 2 is a TON of fun but I doubt will revolutionize anything or even be that big.
Played Neverwinter at E3 and while the demo was fun, the complete lack of PvP and a heavily instanced world (similar to DDO) is going to kill it for a lot of people. The player-made content angle is interesting though.
Archeage is getting a lot of hype but the interface and graphical style alone make my eyes vomit.
Everquest 3? Not much is known but if promises are upheld, something SOE is at least attempting to do nowadays, it could be a beacon of light.
Then there's the biggest elephant in the room, aptly named Titan. If Blizzard is smart, they will shut down WoW 1 day after Titan releases and give WoW vets huge bonuses in the new game. If they do that, Titan will be the winner, aolthough another decade dominated by Blizzard's insidious design philosophies that promote addiction rather than immersion, I'm not sure if the MMO business will survive that.
Right now it is a hypeless time, which is bad for the Website I assume. People will splt over whatever of the last big releases they like most or jump between them. Planetside 2 is a big release coming, but doubtly a mass market game. The War Z is certainly not. Elder Scrolls Online has the brand going for it, World of Darkness the Vampire theme and a couple of Sandboxes to come, like Arch Age are eagerly anticipated by the Star Wars Galaxies veterans...
But lets face it the only game that will have the impact, hype and numbers will be Blizzards WoW successor. If it will be brilliant, a piece of shit, or somewhere in between (like Diablo 3) only time will tell.
Regarding the investment problem into fresh stuff, after Funcoms financial failure with The Secret World, any Suit will be very carful how far away from popular paths they will let a game strife after putting money down on it. I think there won't be much innovation combined with production value. Those wo things will go seperate ways for a while...
I'm willing to try any new MMO if few simple conditons are met:
There will be always failures, so many people simply need them, they feed on them, they are not happy if something does not fail ... and if it does not fail on its own, they will do whatever is humanly possible to make them fail. But is not only gaming, haters are happy with anything that goes wrong, if not, they will willingly help.
^this -- TSW, and let me add World of Darkness. Perhaps TItan
Imo a good mmo must have:
I think the media , marcting and f2p or b2p style will impact to the dev. And the qulity
Funny. Both me and Pokket agree that the next big MMO probably will be a zombie survival MMO... Even funnier is that it is 2 different games.
My guess is Undead labs "Class 4".
Why? I have a couple of reasons.
1. Jeff Strain. The lead designer from Diablo, WC3, GW 1 & 2, and also the guy who originally wanted Blizzard to make a MMO set in the same world as the Warcraft games. He is good and every game he made since Diablo have sold millions of copies.
2. Money. Undead labs are funded by Microsoft and have a good budget.
3. Talent. Undead labs have a rather impressive collection of devs from MMOs and none MMOs.
4. Vision. This game will be really far from both EQ/Wow and FPS games.
The bad thing: The game is made for XBOX, not PC. Undead labs did go out and stated that the forerunner Class 3 also will be released on PC though so there is hope, but this game is made mainly for consoles, not PCs or both and that means the console games strenghts and weaknesses will be in it. However that is also one of the main reasons why I think it will be the next big thing, PC already had its Wow, consoles havnt so there is a huge untapped potential.
You can read more here, it is pretty interesting: http://undeadlabs.com/2011/02/news/rude-qa-2/
No, it doesnt really "must have" anything except solid programming, it needs to be really fun and great game, that is it.
It mustnt have raids, quests, or be a sandbox or themepark, that is just speculations. I am pretty sure it must differ a lot from what we all played before though.
And it sure as #¤% dont need to be fantasy, even if it might be. It could be modern, historical, space opera, cyberpunk, western or whatever. The type of setting doesnt really matter as long as it is really well made.
Atta boy Loke! Shut down someone else for sharing opinions you don't agree with! Yeah! Show us your mmorpg.com spirit!
Good grief, calm down guy. They're just sharing their personal preferences. They're not issuing a mandate.
If someone says "I think the nicest color is blue", are you right on the scene to tell them "No, it isn't"?
But it did become more diverse and evolve, accommodating a wide range of playstyles - you don't seem to accept or acknowledge MMOs outside of the EQ/DAoC/WOW design, so you don't see it.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Thats the difference between "I want an mmo that has:" and "In order for an MMO to be good it must have:"
What people want / enjoy is different between each person. Wether or not something is "good" isnt as simple as what someone wants in a game. A game can be good even though it doesnt have the features a particular person wants, and it can be bad even if it has those things.
A game could have every feature he listed, but it may be a very broken and buggy game. Is it still a good game? On the other hand a game could run perfectly fine with little to no bugs, but not have the particular features he wants. Does that make it a bad game?
Just look at Xsyon as an example for sandboxes. It has just about everything a sandbox fan wants, but in it's current state it is just a bad game and most sandbox fans would agree. On the other hand there are a lot of other games out there that may not be sandboxes that sandbox fans can still admit are good games.
What he said isn't "I think the nicest color is blue" what he said is "Blue is the only good color. All other colors are bad, just because they arent blue".
It's silly semantics, I know. But its how people interpret things, especially on forums.
I think what he is getting at is just the general lack of focus on development and funding of a wider variety of games. Yes there are games that dont follow the norm created by those mentioned games, but they typically dont receive anywhere near the same amount of funding being thrown at most of those games and very few of them can manage to achieve even mild success because they dont have the staff or tools needed to fully realize their dream.
Games like WoW came out, managed to reach enormous success, and all the people with deep pockets to fund a game said "We have to do things like them to be that succesful" instead of realizing "They're already succesful in what they do. We need to do something different and unique to have similar success"
If instead a game like SWG for example had reached the same success as WoW, we would be seeing a market flooded with games similar to SWG instead and fans of themepark EQ / WoW style games would be complaining that theres no good themepark games.
Luckily it seems like after several years of the same recycled crap, some developers / publishers are finally starting to get the hint that they wont out-WoW WoW and we are slowly starting to see an increase in higher quality games that offer something different. No, themeparks won't go away and sandboxes suddenly dominate the market. But we will eventually see more of a balance in the quality and funding of the various types of games instead of like 90% of the market being focused on 1 style.
Things like kickstarter are also becoming more widely used which is an awesome thing. Theres a ton of ideas out there for some really great and original games. But the major funders don't see it as different and original = good. They just care about the safe bet, and so its usually very hard for some of these small teams to get any worthwhile funding. Kickstarter helps these guys out a lot not only with the actual money itself, but also in proving to potential funders that there is a desire for that game and a fanbase willing to support, making them more willing to take a chance on funding the game.
It's just the way the world works. MMOs are no different than any other creation / invention. There have been some truly world changing ideas and inventions created throughout history that, because they were differen than the norm, were considered foolish, risky, and not worth anyones time and money to support. But luckily someone along the way was willing to take a risk with those things and they are now very commonplace throughout the world. We just need people willing to take those same risks on a wider variety of games as well.
Edit: As much as some of us hate them and think they're "ruining gaming", things like Facebook and iPhone apps, games, etc are actually good for us as well. Yes, some of those games are just completely ridiculous and shallow. But with some of them being widely popular, it also kind of opens the eyes of funders to what sort of fame & success can be achieved with what may seem like a very strange and unfamiliar idea and also helps lower the chances that theyw ill tink it too risky to fund someone with those sorts of ideas.
Well there is not much on the horizon for at least the next year as far as I am concered. I see some folks post games that are already out, and shake my head as they failed reading comprehinsion class.
We are talking games in the pipline. Well war-z releazed yesterday so you cant count that one. That only leaves two mmo's that I see in the near future.
Star Citizens they gotten a 125 dollar plegde for the lancer packge. The cleared 800k last night, they need 2 million to get the investors to take a look. We got 23 more days of crowd funding.
Then you have TESO. Well as long as teso is using the hero engine I will ignore that game all together.
Then you have planet-side I played the beta and seen some of the same pvp hacks I saw used in DCUO. No thanks, some folks are going to love the pvp, but that is going to be a niche mmo and honestly it is not an mmo, it kind of reminds me of world of tanks.
So whats left, I don't see anything else, or at least for me.
Before we had years of waiting for Rift, SWOTR, and GW2 all those are now behind us. There really is nothing looming in front of us that says hey look I am going to be the king of games.
I thik a lot of dev houses have gotten sloppy, and they have no clue of what they are doing and what they need to do, the market is becomng stagnant.
I'm thinking Titan will probably be the next real big mmo release.
A little off topic and I hope this isn't taken the wrong way. This piece seems heavily edited. It's more well written than Pokket's usual columns.
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
That is not at all what I said, I just said that the next MMO doesnt have to have anything besides well programming and good gameplay.
It might have the things described, maybe even all of them but saying that it must have something is a huge misstake.
In fact noone know what the next huge MMO must have, I was not trying to sound like a zealot or anything, but if people actually knew what the next large MMO needed we would already have the game.
I did not say that I didnt think the features on the list were good, I in fact agree that several of them are good (dang, how I hate those dailies) but that does not mean the next MMO must have them.
Thinking that the next big MMO must have a whole bunch of specific features is just as bad as assuming that copying Wow will give you a game as popular,
And even mixing only good features might still create a really crappy game. Chocclate is good, salmon is good, jelly beans is good but if you mix them you probably get something that taste horrible.
As I see it if you want to make a truly great game you first start by creating the world, then you invent the mechanics that makes it feel alive, you dont just copy and paste from different games. That did work with a certain huge game but that was only because few people played a MMO before it. If you decide what features you want first and just flick a world over it instead you get a game like TOR.
Imagine instead of Bioware looking on KOTOR and thinking how they could turn it into a multiplayer game would have looked on the movies and thought about how they could invent a game out of it that were as close to Lucas originakl vision as possible. Not to bash TOR particularly, I just used it as example since it was a recent not so great success, WAR, AoC or a wholebunch of examples would have worked just as well.
Starting by taking a whole bunch of features and making a game out of them is starting from the wrong direction. We could make a list of a thousand great features from MMOs from M59 to GW2 and yet if you added all of them the game would most likely be terrible.