Great article. I think it highlights pretty well what is wrong with the majority of MMORPGs. Once a player doesn't feel they are accomplishing anything, they quit playing. Does that seem like a major game design flaw to anyone else? What it means is that such a game is not fun, but rather brainwashes players into doing horribly boring tasks with the promise of a reward.
Character progression has its place in an RPG but when that is the entire reason for playing then the game becomes a colossal waste of time. Leveling to level just to level and get gear to get more gear to get more gear? Cringe-worthy. And how do you get levels and gear? By doing boring dungeons over and over, or killing 10 rats a billion times.
If an MMORPG was actually fun to play then progression could be relegated to a secondary aspect of the game, and people would play it for fun and progress their character as they did so. What we have now in the MMORPG industry is a Pavlovian Nightmare of players doing horribly boring things over and over to get their reward. It's conditioning and brainwashing. WAKE UP PEOPLE! Ask yourself if you would enjoy the mmorpg you are playing if there were no more levels to get or more gear to obtain! If the answer is 'No', then you need to find a game that is actually fun! Stop supporting all this crap on the market! STOP THE MADNESS!
Are you a Pavlovian Fish Biscuit Addict? Get Help Now! I will play no more MMORPGs until somethign good comes out!
Without wading through all the replies what makes me continue to play my character after reaching max level is mostly the fact that I enjoy playing that character. Even if it's grinding I can still team with my friends and play with them or just cruise around enjoying myself. The fact there are rewards, even of "lesser" value, for grinding at max level is a bonus. There's practically always a way to improve the character a little bit.
Originally posted by newchemicals This is a reason why I like EVE Online, no levels.
I think EVE is one of the most complex and amazing MMO's out there. In a certain way it is very close to what Matt said to be, for the developers, the perfect MMO which would have no level cap. EVE has no levels, however even after 5 years playing I am still training and learning new skills.
In regard of the question, what motivates me after reaching level cap, well there's a lot of things. Upgrading my gear, beating the hardest bosses and dungeons, acumulating game currency, going after the best loot, exploring the most dangerous regions and of course PVP.
And by the way I really dislike instanced PVP, open world PVP ftw. I know It can be hard for some but there's alternatives like EVE has for PVErs, high-sec where you can not be attacked, or the good old SWG where you had to be overt or flagged to be vulnerable to players. GW2's WvW is nice too, the only problem I see is that it is not persistent, I mean no matter how much effort, gold and skill points you put in it, it will all be lost in a week. I don't like that very much.
"What motivates you still playing your character when you’ve reached the level cap?"
definitely not the grind. I dont rush to level cap because i dont care about the glorified end game, i will keep playing and making new alts as long as i am enjoying the world and its story differently with each character i make, at a slow pace.
At level cap i expect to make a new alt and have a totally different experience from evel 1 to cap again (this worked for me with varous character in WoW and GW2 without feeling the heavy grind in WoW because of the good story and GW2 i feel like theres no grind at all while leveling but it can still be improved). Thats important to me. I prefer alts over end game grinds because of that phrase, end game grind. You dont progress, you mindless grind until theres more content added to keep mindlessly grinding. Thats Not fun to me.
Also, i personally believe that people (not all but maybe most) who dont care about the game, just want to kill kill kill and get powerful loot, this are the ones who usually support pay to win practices. I believe this because its obvious thats what they want, power and only power, and when companies offer them power right from the cash shop they see the light at the end of the tunnel, powerful loot without moving a finger. These people are actually the reason why mmos havent evolved beyond the archaic mechanics that arent fun anymore. Even in mmos that dont have p2w or cash shop at all. They do the same in every mmo they play.
my opinion
EDIT: also the near perfect game wouldnt have any level (or class limit) at all.
CoH continually captured my interest with each new powerset. I knew the game enough that leveling was not a grind but just fun to get more powerful. Grinding for purple recipes was a little off-putting but it was a major rush when you got the drop. I never really got into Incarnates. Not sure why I don't enjoy other MMOs as much because objectively I can see they are small variations on grinding but subjectively just not as fun.
I guess I was just a fan of the great visceral effects(sound/animation/particles) of each powerset. I didn't read the story much so for me that says a lot about just the mechanics of CoH to keep my coming back over 8 years. I also enjoyed just accumulating as much stuff as possible. My only regret was there was not much to use all that 'loot' except to pass it to other characters or just sit on it like a dragon. I was always hoping to gather enough resources to create an awesome base and play it like a sandbox game(PvE raids by some arch enemy)
When I hit the end game, there's usually two things I want to do: try out another character or do something "fun". The former works great when there's lots of ways to build characters and make them play different from each other, as well as available character slots to do that. It's not so great when there's a massive constraint on slots or customization (or worse, both).
The latter varies, but I do not want to feel like "Yay, I spent 2 months getting to the cap, now to spend 2 more months per item that I want." Especially if said items are pretty much required to participate in other end-game activities. Rather, I want to just go out and have fun and I want whatever I do to work towards whatever piece of gear I'm looking at. I want to be able to group up with some friends, regardless of what they're playing, and go play whatever content we find fun or interesting, regardless of whatever level it's at. PvP and RP are also great options too.
But yeah, essentially, I need to bring up CoX again (which I seem to do in every one of your articles). That game did it right for me during the pre-incarnate days. Once I hit 50, I wasn't forced to run this instance ad nauseum for this piece of gear and this one ad nauseum for this piece of gear and then these dailies for that piece of gear and so forth. No, I could take my character and go run with my friend's lowbie alts on a Posi TF, then go with them on their level capped alts and run the STF, and then rush over to redside (being a Vigilante) and help them with the villain Respec Trial. And, all the while, I'm earning Reward Merits that can get me most anything I want with time. And the stuff those couldn't get, there was Inf I was earning as well to buy them off of Wentsworths. In fact, I could earn useful inf no matter what I did, as well as drops I could turn into inf.
Basically, it was fun. There wasn't a "specific end-game task" to do and that was fine. I didn't care because I could do whatever I wanted. I wasn't forced to repeat certain bits of content just to get a new shiny that'll enable me to repeat certain bits of other content. If I repeated a certain piece of content, it was because I found that piece of content particularly fun (The ITF being the most notable example).
And if I didn't feel like doing that, I had a dozen or so alts I could play who, even if they were the same AT or even had similar powers, played nothing like either my mains (I had two characters who I considered to be my mains) or my other alts. So, even if I had played a mission arc before, playing it with an alt was often a very diffierent experience.
Damn, I miss that game way more than I thought I would.
In response to all the "don't bore me with dailies" posts, I just want to state for the record (and this is in direct response to the question of "What keeps you coming back to your main after hitting the cap?") that I liked the Inacrnate Trials in CoH and the Weekly Strike Target, and the seasonal events. The Weekly Strike Target in particular was good, because they published what they were going to be in advance, so you could plan for it. Previous to that, there was nothing worse than trying to form a Task Force and coming up one or two people short of critical mass, after like half an hour of begging people to join. Having a more organized "flavor of the week" made it easier to plan out when you were going to try to hit which Task Force with which toon. I also liked that occasional very rare ("purple") drops. I can't say I ever played my main just for purple drops, as he was a Defender, and thus not really able to plow through massive amounts of mobs in a hurry like my Mastermind was, but I did generally do the daily 5 tip missions on my Mastermind when I was soloing, because it gave me something to do while soloing on my low-population server (Triumph) and I got a lot of great swag in the process. That gets old after a while, but then CoH never really ran out of content (for me) by the time it was 8 years old, because there were like infinite Architect missions you could try and you generally never ran out of stuff you wanted to do (go to Bloody Bay and get more Shivan jellomen, go to Warburg and get another Nuke, do tips for Hero Merits, do a Task Froce for a badge, etc etc). I guess what I'm saying is, I never felt like any of my toons were "done" because I used to alt enough that I could switch to a different toon when I got bored. I also never abused the market to the poiont where I was able to get all the goodies I ever wanted, not even for just one toon. To some extent this is like the difference between just buying a Standard-legal Magic tourny deck as opposed to drafting to acquire cards the fun way and then building your own deck. The BYO approach generally does not lead to as many tourny wins as the former, but it's the journey not the destination (at least for me, I'm not a competitive gamer, I play for fun, and by fun I do not mean "win at all costs, by any means available, even if it turns the games into a grindy frustration-fest for all involved, including myself"). I was never really trying to "break" the economy in CoH, so as such all of my toons were in a constant state of "not really finished, and probably never will be", which was fine by me. The rules changes that they would roll out to try to close loopholes and rebalance the powers never really bothered me (although it was somewhat too little too late when they FINALLY fixed the HamiOs to work like they were originally intended). Honestly though, having as many alts as I did was a big part of the draw for me. I would not have stayed on CoH, or any game, if I were only allowed one toon. The fact that there were like 14 different archetypes and loads of different powersets was a HUGE part of that game's appeal, that and the nearly-infinite avatar configurability. Heck, by the end, they were letting you change the colors of the POWERS to match your concept. That was awesome.
"Well sure, the FrinkiacVII looks impressive - DON'T TOUCH IT - but I predict that within 100 years computers will be TWICE as powerful, ten THOUSAND times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them." -Prof. Frink
"Well sure, the FrinkiacVII looks impressive - DON'T TOUCH IT - but I predict that within 100 years computers will be TWICE as powerful, ten THOUSAND times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them." -Prof. Frink
What motivates you still playing your character when you’ve reached the level cap?
Once I got to the top, I had to make hard decisions about my characters.
Did this character live up to my expectations?
1. Did I like the character?
2. Did I like the powers?
3. How did this character's performance compare to previous toons? If the character was a slow earner I deleted it. I did that with my first toon(controller) and recreated her as a Dominator(had more attack powers).
If I had positive responses to each question, I felt I could maintain my character (XP, Gear, etc.) reasonably. Maintenance was always in the back of mind when creating toons from the start. The times I left COH was when the maintenance was too much.
BY the way, had to share this video because they seem to be hitting the nail on the head about grinding here. Haven't gotten around to trying out the game they're talking about in it, but their little ad is spot on. Gaming really starts feeling like work after a while.
"What motivates you still playing your character when you’ve reached the level cap?"
The essential problem, isn't it?
Even with shortened leveling speeds, by the time you've actually reached the cap, you've experienced ever bit of character development that you're likely to; no more spells or powers, no more growth.
That leaves AA (or Rep or Badges or whatever) and Gear. As far as I know, no one's ever come up with any other options to simulate advancement against a brick wall. It's possible that the very expectation is just simply ludicrous on its face.
Alts--Blizzard knows, first: do any and everything you can to encourage alt-itis.
Even with alts, you're only delaying the onset of "I'm getting nowhere, really", the Enemy and very essence of "Grind". Go back, level up again, hit the wall again. Go back. Level up again. Hit the wall again. Feeling grindy? No wai, how baffling.
PvP--distract them into the alternate path, if you can. Not suitable for all players, darnit.
Raid--it's like pvp, if you can get them to visit those 'top guilds' sites, compete dammit. Otherwise, maybe these trophies will distract them til next expansion? Keep ahead of those scrubs! They're not mad l33t like yew are? Kewl New Bosses, look! (uh oh)
Exploration--gotta catch em all kids.
Badges and achievements--think they'll notice it's pokemon again?
Collectoritis--stops working, once their lockers are filled up.
Economic Domination--Not suitable for all players, gonna need some math skills and native smarts, kids.
Housing--Been there, done that, yours is not sufficiently different from the previous games.
New Mounts and Trophies and Status Symbols--ooh, shiny!
The more 'veteran' your players are, the less likely they are to be distracted by the new shinies into not seeing the Grind, again. And if you can manage to distract them again, the distraction will last for less time for each cycle...or new expansion, or new title.
Perhaps what we need to do is remove all of that previous playing experience, somehow... lobotomy??
SandbooooooxXXxxXxXx!!!111one!!!
A handful of new experiences, but not many. Tweak your Constructor mania, for a little while.
Now what the heck will we do?
We allowed all of the social and roleplaying elements of these games to expire from neglect, years ago. Oh my oh dear.
Maybe we should just let this one customer "get away", Sam. Don't think we can provide him with an substitute simulated life forever, after all. But George, it's not one customer, it's millions of them. Oh, oh damn.
Nothing left to try except retreating to mmorpg.com and working on our continuous bitching skills.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Tthe "grind" is a necessity and anyone that disagrees doesn't understand this genre and needs to play something other than an MMORPG.
Eventually regardless of these "new experiments" pan out the grind is what will always make this genre what it is. The grind is a necessity and no matter what you do it will always be a grind, but these days the grind is quicker and holds less value which is why you see MMO's dying off after merely a couple of months.
Slow grind is what makes a great MMORPG, content as you grind is all that matters, but the grind is a necessity and hopefully the consumers have come to realize that this "fast track" leveling just doesn't fit into what this genre is about, go play an action or single player game and quit ruining MMORPG's with your casual mentality.
People want everything now, till they have everything, then they want it the other way when they have everything, it should be the same path everyone has to follow from the start for an MMORPG to hold value.
Comments
Great article. I think it highlights pretty well what is wrong with the majority of MMORPGs. Once a player doesn't feel they are accomplishing anything, they quit playing. Does that seem like a major game design flaw to anyone else? What it means is that such a game is not fun, but rather brainwashes players into doing horribly boring tasks with the promise of a reward.
Character progression has its place in an RPG but when that is the entire reason for playing then the game becomes a colossal waste of time. Leveling to level just to level and get gear to get more gear to get more gear? Cringe-worthy. And how do you get levels and gear? By doing boring dungeons over and over, or killing 10 rats a billion times.
If an MMORPG was actually fun to play then progression could be relegated to a secondary aspect of the game, and people would play it for fun and progress their character as they did so. What we have now in the MMORPG industry is a Pavlovian Nightmare of players doing horribly boring things over and over to get their reward. It's conditioning and brainwashing. WAKE UP PEOPLE! Ask yourself if you would enjoy the mmorpg you are playing if there were no more levels to get or more gear to obtain! If the answer is 'No', then you need to find a game that is actually fun! Stop supporting all this crap on the market! STOP THE MADNESS!
Are you a Pavlovian Fish Biscuit Addict? Get Help Now!
I will play no more MMORPGs until somethign good comes out!
I see a post like this and I relive the shock of losing CoH again. It's like finding out one of your best friends is moving away.
/em holdtorch!
I think EVE is one of the most complex and amazing MMO's out there. In a certain way it is very close to what Matt said to be, for the developers, the perfect MMO which would have no level cap. EVE has no levels, however even after 5 years playing I am still training and learning new skills.
In regard of the question, what motivates me after reaching level cap, well there's a lot of things. Upgrading my gear, beating the hardest bosses and dungeons, acumulating game currency, going after the best loot, exploring the most dangerous regions and of course PVP.
And by the way I really dislike instanced PVP, open world PVP ftw. I know It can be hard for some but there's alternatives like EVE has for PVErs, high-sec where you can not be attacked, or the good old SWG where you had to be overt or flagged to be vulnerable to players. GW2's WvW is nice too, the only problem I see is that it is not persistent, I mean no matter how much effort, gold and skill points you put in it, it will all be lost in a week. I don't like that very much.
"What motivates you still playing your character when you’ve reached the level cap?"
definitely not the grind. I dont rush to level cap because i dont care about the glorified end game, i will keep playing and making new alts as long as i am enjoying the world and its story differently with each character i make, at a slow pace.
At level cap i expect to make a new alt and have a totally different experience from evel 1 to cap again (this worked for me with varous character in WoW and GW2 without feeling the heavy grind in WoW because of the good story and GW2 i feel like theres no grind at all while leveling but it can still be improved). Thats important to me. I prefer alts over end game grinds because of that phrase, end game grind. You dont progress, you mindless grind until theres more content added to keep mindlessly grinding. Thats Not fun to me.
Also, i personally believe that people (not all but maybe most) who dont care about the game, just want to kill kill kill and get powerful loot, this are the ones who usually support pay to win practices. I believe this because its obvious thats what they want, power and only power, and when companies offer them power right from the cash shop they see the light at the end of the tunnel, powerful loot without moving a finger. These people are actually the reason why mmos havent evolved beyond the archaic mechanics that arent fun anymore. Even in mmos that dont have p2w or cash shop at all. They do the same in every mmo they play.
my opinion
EDIT: also the near perfect game wouldnt have any level (or class limit) at all.
CoH continually captured my interest with each new powerset. I knew the game enough that leveling was not a grind but just fun to get more powerful. Grinding for purple recipes was a little off-putting but it was a major rush when you got the drop. I never really got into Incarnates. Not sure why I don't enjoy other MMOs as much because objectively I can see they are small variations on grinding but subjectively just not as fun.
I guess I was just a fan of the great visceral effects(sound/animation/particles) of each powerset. I didn't read the story much so for me that says a lot about just the mechanics of CoH to keep my coming back over 8 years. I also enjoyed just accumulating as much stuff as possible. My only regret was there was not much to use all that 'loot' except to pass it to other characters or just sit on it like a dragon. I was always hoping to gather enough resources to create an awesome base and play it like a sandbox game(PvE raids by some arch enemy)
When I hit the end game, there's usually two things I want to do: try out another character or do something "fun". The former works great when there's lots of ways to build characters and make them play different from each other, as well as available character slots to do that. It's not so great when there's a massive constraint on slots or customization (or worse, both).
The latter varies, but I do not want to feel like "Yay, I spent 2 months getting to the cap, now to spend 2 more months per item that I want." Especially if said items are pretty much required to participate in other end-game activities. Rather, I want to just go out and have fun and I want whatever I do to work towards whatever piece of gear I'm looking at. I want to be able to group up with some friends, regardless of what they're playing, and go play whatever content we find fun or interesting, regardless of whatever level it's at. PvP and RP are also great options too.
But yeah, essentially, I need to bring up CoX again (which I seem to do in every one of your articles). That game did it right for me during the pre-incarnate days. Once I hit 50, I wasn't forced to run this instance ad nauseum for this piece of gear and this one ad nauseum for this piece of gear and then these dailies for that piece of gear and so forth. No, I could take my character and go run with my friend's lowbie alts on a Posi TF, then go with them on their level capped alts and run the STF, and then rush over to redside (being a Vigilante) and help them with the villain Respec Trial. And, all the while, I'm earning Reward Merits that can get me most anything I want with time. And the stuff those couldn't get, there was Inf I was earning as well to buy them off of Wentsworths. In fact, I could earn useful inf no matter what I did, as well as drops I could turn into inf.
Basically, it was fun. There wasn't a "specific end-game task" to do and that was fine. I didn't care because I could do whatever I wanted. I wasn't forced to repeat certain bits of content just to get a new shiny that'll enable me to repeat certain bits of other content. If I repeated a certain piece of content, it was because I found that piece of content particularly fun (The ITF being the most notable example).
And if I didn't feel like doing that, I had a dozen or so alts I could play who, even if they were the same AT or even had similar powers, played nothing like either my mains (I had two characters who I considered to be my mains) or my other alts. So, even if I had played a mission arc before, playing it with an alt was often a very diffierent experience.
Damn, I miss that game way more than I thought I would.
In response to all the "don't bore me with dailies" posts, I just want to state for the record (and this is in direct response to the question of "What keeps you coming back to your main after hitting the cap?") that I liked the Inacrnate Trials in CoH and the Weekly Strike Target, and the seasonal events. The Weekly Strike Target in particular was good, because they published what they were going to be in advance, so you could plan for it. Previous to that, there was nothing worse than trying to form a Task Force and coming up one or two people short of critical mass, after like half an hour of begging people to join. Having a more organized "flavor of the week" made it easier to plan out when you were going to try to hit which Task Force with which toon. I also liked that occasional very rare ("purple") drops. I can't say I ever played my main just for purple drops, as he was a Defender, and thus not really able to plow through massive amounts of mobs in a hurry like my Mastermind was, but I did generally do the daily 5 tip missions on my Mastermind when I was soloing, because it gave me something to do while soloing on my low-population server (Triumph) and I got a lot of great swag in the process. That gets old after a while, but then CoH never really ran out of content (for me) by the time it was 8 years old, because there were like infinite Architect missions you could try and you generally never ran out of stuff you wanted to do (go to Bloody Bay and get more Shivan jellomen, go to Warburg and get another Nuke, do tips for Hero Merits, do a Task Froce for a badge, etc etc). I guess what I'm saying is, I never felt like any of my toons were "done" because I used to alt enough that I could switch to a different toon when I got bored. I also never abused the market to the poiont where I was able to get all the goodies I ever wanted, not even for just one toon. To some extent this is like the difference between just buying a Standard-legal Magic tourny deck as opposed to drafting to acquire cards the fun way and then building your own deck. The BYO approach generally does not lead to as many tourny wins as the former, but it's the journey not the destination (at least for me, I'm not a competitive gamer, I play for fun, and by fun I do not mean "win at all costs, by any means available, even if it turns the games into a grindy frustration-fest for all involved, including myself"). I was never really trying to "break" the economy in CoH, so as such all of my toons were in a constant state of "not really finished, and probably never will be", which was fine by me. The rules changes that they would roll out to try to close loopholes and rebalance the powers never really bothered me (although it was somewhat too little too late when they FINALLY fixed the HamiOs to work like they were originally intended). Honestly though, having as many alts as I did was a big part of the draw for me. I would not have stayed on CoH, or any game, if I were only allowed one toon. The fact that there were like 14 different archetypes and loads of different powersets was a HUGE part of that game's appeal, that and the nearly-infinite avatar configurability. Heck, by the end, they were letting you change the colors of the POWERS to match your concept. That was awesome.
"Well sure, the FrinkiacVII looks impressive - DON'T TOUCH IT - but I predict that within 100 years computers will be TWICE as powerful, ten THOUSAND times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them." -Prof. Frink
Oh, and another thing:
/em holdtorch
"Well sure, the FrinkiacVII looks impressive - DON'T TOUCH IT - but I predict that within 100 years computers will be TWICE as powerful, ten THOUSAND times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them." -Prof. Frink
"Players can be like water and will often find the shortest, easiest, path to what they want."
The vast majority are unfortunalty.
What keeps me playing? Community and good end game activities. Raids, taking forts and the like.
What motivates you still playing your character when you’ve reached the level cap?
Once I got to the top, I had to make hard decisions about my characters.
Did this character live up to my expectations?
1. Did I like the character?
2. Did I like the powers?
3. How did this character's performance compare to previous toons? If the character was a slow earner I deleted it. I did that with my first toon(controller) and recreated her as a Dominator(had more attack powers).
If I had positive responses to each question, I felt I could maintain my character (XP, Gear, etc.) reasonably. Maintenance was always in the back of mind when creating toons from the start. The times I left COH was when the maintenance was too much.
BY the way, had to share this video because they seem to be hitting the nail on the head about grinding here. Haven't gotten around to trying out the game they're talking about in it, but their little ad is spot on. Gaming really starts feeling like work after a while.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izhrXHcPHqg
"What motivates you still playing your character when you’ve reached the level cap?"
The essential problem, isn't it?
Even with shortened leveling speeds, by the time you've actually reached the cap, you've experienced ever bit of character development that you're likely to; no more spells or powers, no more growth.
That leaves AA (or Rep or Badges or whatever) and Gear. As far as I know, no one's ever come up with any other options to simulate advancement against a brick wall. It's possible that the very expectation is just simply ludicrous on its face.
Alts--Blizzard knows, first: do any and everything you can to encourage alt-itis.
Even with alts, you're only delaying the onset of "I'm getting nowhere, really", the Enemy and very essence of "Grind". Go back, level up again, hit the wall again. Go back. Level up again. Hit the wall again. Feeling grindy? No wai, how baffling.
PvP--distract them into the alternate path, if you can. Not suitable for all players, darnit.
Raid--it's like pvp, if you can get them to visit those 'top guilds' sites, compete dammit. Otherwise, maybe these trophies will distract them til next expansion? Keep ahead of those scrubs! They're not mad l33t like yew are? Kewl New Bosses, look! (uh oh)
Exploration--gotta catch em all kids.
Badges and achievements--think they'll notice it's pokemon again?
Collectoritis--stops working, once their lockers are filled up.
Economic Domination--Not suitable for all players, gonna need some math skills and native smarts, kids.
Housing--Been there, done that, yours is not sufficiently different from the previous games.
New Mounts and Trophies and Status Symbols--ooh, shiny!
The more 'veteran' your players are, the less likely they are to be distracted by the new shinies into not seeing the Grind, again. And if you can manage to distract them again, the distraction will last for less time for each cycle...or new expansion, or new title.
Perhaps what we need to do is remove all of that previous playing experience, somehow... lobotomy??
SandbooooooxXXxxXxXx!!!111one!!!
A handful of new experiences, but not many. Tweak your Constructor mania, for a little while.
Now what the heck will we do?
We allowed all of the social and roleplaying elements of these games to expire from neglect, years ago. Oh my oh dear.
Maybe we should just let this one customer "get away", Sam. Don't think we can provide him with an substitute simulated life forever, after all. But George, it's not one customer, it's millions of them. Oh, oh damn.
Nothing left to try except retreating to mmorpg.com and working on our continuous bitching skills.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
i personally hate it when games just rush you to endgame.
grind its only in minds of players who want to reach endgame instantaneously.
Tthe "grind" is a necessity and anyone that disagrees doesn't understand this genre and needs to play something other than an MMORPG.
Eventually regardless of these "new experiments" pan out the grind is what will always make this genre what it is. The grind is a necessity and no matter what you do it will always be a grind, but these days the grind is quicker and holds less value which is why you see MMO's dying off after merely a couple of months.
Slow grind is what makes a great MMORPG, content as you grind is all that matters, but the grind is a necessity and hopefully the consumers have come to realize that this "fast track" leveling just doesn't fit into what this genre is about, go play an action or single player game and quit ruining MMORPG's with your casual mentality.
People want everything now, till they have everything, then they want it the other way when they have everything, it should be the same path everyone has to follow from the start for an MMORPG to hold value.