I feel like mmos are intentionally made to not be fun, or rather aren't allowed to be

brentapps

It's no secret that every single mmo copies wow.  Why do they do this?  Probably because executives say something like: "It's not enough like wow, make it more like wow".  The problem with this is the assumption that wow is the most fun possible mmo design that can be created.  Secondly, the design has been corrupted over time until the original point was lost.  Just no!  think about it for a second.  "Ok, this is our game.  We'll have players do meaningless tasks till max level, then they can sit in a city and kill monsters with other players a few times a week.  They can also kill each other.  The goal will be to get better gear for their character"

At its core, this is what every single mmo has become.  The leveling is considered a waste of time almost.  I don't even think dev's know why it's there anymore.  It's all about having people hit max level, then chase down gear for raiding so they can pvp vs other players.  Combat is intended to be simple with abilities that anyone can use, and you're guided down a simple path with easy tasks that anyone can do.  But this can't possibly be the most fun design out there.

An mmo should be made to be FUN as a game first, and an mmo second.  If someone never knew what an mmo was and made one from scratch with no experience but limitless tools, what do you think they would make?  Probably a large open world with a lot of fun and interesting things to do and places to explore.  There would be rare items and difficult bosses to fight.  The idea of the game would be a world where you're an adventurer trying to overcome new challenges while meeting other players and possibly working with them or against them.  I'm going to bet the power level would be FLAT, in other words more things to do per level instead of a linear path.

More or less, I think that's the basic idea of what an mmo is at its very essence, the concept so to speak.  Why was this original concept lost?  If you look at everquest, it took this concept and made a game world around being an adventurer overcoming challenges.  There was no direction, you were just dropped into this harsh world and told to go survive.  This game was too hard for a lot of people, so blizzard came along and took eq and decided to remove all the frustrating aspects of it and add everything that players asked for.  No more corpse runs, no more exp loss per death.... no more twinking, no more grinding(quests so that you feel like you have direction), good pvp, more fluid combat, instances so people who want to group can do so without getting ksed, etc etc.  It all sounds good.  The problem for me is all these things ruined the sense of adventure to an extent.  But it was still not bad, it was a good game and I played it(as well as a lot of other people).  But over time it continued to be corrupted.  The design kept becoming easier and evolving and evolving until the original game was lost.  Now mmos are looked at as "do some quests till you hit max level, then you raid or you pvp for better gear".

Imo, the industry needs to go back to realizing why someone would even take an interest in this type of game to begin with.  What is it that makes someone want to play a mmorpg over an fps or a single player rpg?  I think until some company realizes what it is that people really are after, it's just going to continue down this same path of making a game designed around collecting loot instead of playing the game itself.

 

VengeSunsoar

Originally posted by brentapps

It's no secret that every single mmo copies wow.  Why do they do this?  Probably because executives say something like: "It's not enough like wow, make it more like wow".  The problem with this is the assumption that wow is the most fun possible mmo design that can be created.  Secondly, the design has been corrupted over time until the original point was lost.  Just no!  think about it for a second.  "Ok, this is our game.  We'll have players do meaningless tasks till max level, then they can sit in a city and kill monsters with other players a few times a week.  They can also kill each other.  The goal will be to get better gear for their character"

At its core, this is what every single mmo has become.  The leveling is considered a waste of time almost.  I don't even think dev's know why it's there anymore.  It's all about having people hit max level, then chase down gear for raiding so they can pvp vs other players.  Combat is intended to be simple with abilities that anyone can use, and you're guided down a simple path with easy tasks that anyone can do.  But this can't possibly be the most fun design out there.

An mmo should be made to be FUN as a game first, and an mmo second.  If someone never knew what an mmo was and made one from scratch with no experience but limitless tools, what do you think they would make?  Probably a large open world with a lot of fun and interesting things to do and places to explore.  There would be rare items and difficult bosses to fight.  The idea of the game would be a world where you're an adventurer trying to overcome new challenges while meeting other players and possibly working with them or against them.  I'm going to bet the power level would be FLAT, in other words more things to do per level instead of a linear path.

More or less, I think that's the basic idea of what an mmo is at its very essence, the concept so to speak.  Why was this original concept lost?  If you look at everquest, it took this concept and made a game world around being an adventurer overcoming challenges.  There was no direction, you were just dropped into this harsh world and told to go survive.  This game was too hard for a lot of people, so blizzard came along and took eq and decided to remove all the frustrating aspects of it and add everything that players asked for.  No more corpse runs, no more exp loss per death.... no more twinking, no more grinding(quests so that you feel like you have direction), good pvp, more fluid combat, instances so people who want to group can do so without getting ksed, etc etc.  It all sounds good.  The problem for me is all these things ruined the sense of adventure to an extent.  But it was still not bad, it was a good game and I played it(as well as a lot of other people).  But over time it continued to be corrupted.  The design kept becoming easier and evolving and evolving until the original game was lost.  Now mmos are looked at as "do some quests till you hit max level, then you raid or you pvp for better gear".

Imo, the industry needs to go back to realizing why someone would even take an interest in this type of game to begin with.  What is it that makes someone want to play a mmorpg over an fps or a single player rpg?  I think until some company realizes what it is that people really are after, it's just going to continue down this same path of making a game designed around collecting loot instead of playing the game itself.

 

*looks at the MMO's that are nothing like WoW.  Looks at the MMO's on his computer that I am still having fun with including WoW again*

Interesting.

Loktofeit

Originally posted by brentapps

It's no secret that every single mmo copies wow. 

 

 

Sengi

Wows greatest achievement was not to get 11mil players to play the game in its hey-days but to brainwash a whole generation of game designers to approach mmorpgs only through the concepts they learned from wow. Even if wow is in decline its heritage will live on for years ahead.

It seems to me that game designers when hired to work on a mmo immediately think: “this is wow with feature x added”. They see everything through their wow-shaped glasses and don’t even think that wows concepts of mobs, quests or dungeons could ever be differed.

 

I realize that this is wrong since people working in the game industry are mostly really creative individuals. Maybe it has something to do with development teams have gotten so large so it all boils down to the largest common denominator. It takes a great collective vision or al least someone in charge that is able to drive an innovative game.

 

A good example for this fallback to wows concepts is how the dynamic events where implemented in gw2. In their manifesto video their main point is that they did not want traditional (read wows) quests in gw2 but dynamic events instead. But then they added these heart-quests that are just your standard wow quests with the only difference that you don’t have to visit the quest giver. And the dynamic events they have are organized in quite short chains so they repeat quite fast. In the end they started with a new concept but then turned out not that differed from wow. It is like wows concepts oozed out of the developers collective mind.

MMOExposed

It looks like every MMO copies WoW because WoW copy other MMO.

thats something people forget. 

People called Warhammer a WoW clone remember?

but what did WoW do in WoTLK that Warhammer already was doing?

Quirhid

Oh god... I was going to reply something proper but then I read the first sentece ...

atuerstar

"The problem with this is the assumption..."

 

Dramatic Irony -This technique highlights the importance of a particular truth by portraying a person who is strikingly unaware of it.