Yep, good points. Most gamers deep down like hard games and the incredible feeling of accomplishment they bring. The problem is.. A company pushing such an MMO has to be merciless. The devs have to ignore almost all complaints, which in todays market equals to marketing suicide. In the past such companies were the norm.. How could you even contact any devs back then? By phone? Forums weren't even a concept at the time.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.' -Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid." -Luke McKinney
With the exception of running away mobs I agree with all your points. It is sad, because reading the list shows how cheaper and simplified modern MMOs have become.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Originally posted by Razeekster I'm a huge fan of Vanguard... It sounds like EverQuest may have more of a thriving population though. Am I wrong in this? I'd like to give it a try either way, it's just that it's getting kinda sad to play Vanguard because I'm a role player and there is practically no role playing because of the low player base.
Everquest still has a stronger population than Vanguard. It is mostly at endgame though, and the trip to endgame is a lot more time consuming than Vanguard, also the UI is really showing its age.
But if you want to try EQ, perhaps wait for the next progression server to be released, so you can start on equal footing with lots of new players. Not sure if they will be doing anymore though.
I never played EQ, but was a Dark Age of Camelot player. A lot of mechanics were pretty similar. I really miss the dugeons like Stonehenge Barrow where you played parts at different levels as the article mentions about EQ dugeons. It felt great to see down a hallway and wonder what was down there, but know that soon you'd get to find out as higher level players ran past you to kill whatever was down there.
I miss having to actually work to finish a quest. Having to look for a mob or quest item and that sense of accomplishment when you did find it. Now it's a pinpoint radar that puts a neon sign over the objectives head.
You used to have to work for your levels. Now, using WoW as an example, you only really have to level tradionally up to 15. After that it's the dungeon grind. There are parts of Azeroth my son has never seen because he's spent so much time in dungeons. And he has multiple level 90's.
-In vanilla many classes where not polished, but they were much more open to all kind of playing styles, too. Remember tanking with your shaman? Or using pets as tanks? We did so many crazy things especially in dungeons. But later everybody wanted a clear role, so dungeon crawling became more and more dumbed down (although the boss-fights became much better).
Not to mention crowd-controlling mace rogues that were nerfed because of PvP crybabies. A fun meaningful build in PvE ruined by the inclusion of a completely ancillary and unnecessary PvP side-activity.
The biggest thing modern MMOs need to recall from the early MMOs is a huge game world. Of course it needs to be filled and that vastly increases production time especially for a theme-park. So they just make a smaller world you see in three months expecting everyone to play end game or PvP or mini games to be happy until they add an equally small expansion.
If the world is huge and its possible to play a different race from a different starting city with a different place to level up then players don't have to invent ways to wait for the new content.
'Sandbox MMO' is a PTSD trigger word for anyone who has the experience to know that anonymous players invariably use a 'sandbox' in the same manner a housecat does.
When your head is stuck in the sand, your ass becomes the only recognizable part of you.
No game is more fun than the one you can't play, and no game is more boring than one which you've become familiar.
How to become a millionaire: Start with a billion dollars and make an MMO.
When I played EQ it was mandatory to have a macro button programmed for trains. Something like "TRAIN coming through get out of the way!"
When you goofed up and aggroed half the mobs in the zone you had to make a beeline for the zoneline and the mobs chasing you would aggro any player along the way.
One thing to add that fits very well with these points:
Vendor diving
If you sold an item to a vendor, someone else could visit that vendor and buy it back (before the vendor inventory became full, and even then it was still buried in there somewhere). One man's trash is another man's treasure was very prevalent in EQ.
When I played EQ it was mandatory to have a macro button programmed for trains. Something like "TRAIN coming through get out of the way!"
When you goofed up and aggroed half the mobs in the zone you had to make a beeline for the zoneline and the mobs chasing you would aggro any player along the way.
I haven't really seen that in other MMOs.
Yeah, because they kind of realized in the early 2000's that allowing a small subset of players to completely ruin the experience of an entire game's population was poor design.
Hence you see/saw the move towards more inclusion, less exclusion, more intuitive, less kludginess, and because of that the total MMO population sky rocketed, and because of the population boom (which = market expansion) you now have so many more games, and so many more options.
Yeah, older MMOs were fun, had their uniqueness and I have a lot of nostalgia, but I would never go back...
... and I bet many of you who say you wish you could would only have very fleeting feelings of happiness before you grew tired/bored of it.
#6 crowd control - yeah, it's fun, but it's hardly necessary when you solo 95% of your time in so-called massively multiplayer games!
Not a bad list but it doesn't get at the heart of the matter.
1. Grouping. MMORPGs *should* be entirely about grouping. Solo should be horribly inefficient and something you do sparingly, and if you can't group most of the time, then don't play - go play any of the bazillion single player games out there. Or play the far too many crappy wannabe MMORPGs that are weak single player games and weaker MMORPGs.
The absolute worst thing to happen to the MMORPG genre was the shift to heavily solo-based since grouping is what freaking defines the genre. It's actually mind boggling why this ever happened.
It's like companies involved in the genre decided that instead of making special and amazing games for a dedicated following that they would instead go the corporate whore route of making mind candy for the masses - going for mass appeal and numbers instead of quality and fidelity - and the types of games and the way they flow now shows how lame this is. Yeah, you get big release numbers, and games can't stay sub-based, and have huge drop offs in numbers, and are ultimately considered failures and repetitive garbage - because these types of MMORPGs *are* garbage - they're ultimately weak single player games that people play and move on.
As a side note, F2P is the second worse thing but fortunately some companies are at least attempting to get away from that sewage - not that they have much hope since they are creating solo-first games instead of real MMORPGs and no single player game occasional optional grouping will ever be worth a sub. F2P MMORPGs are fallout from designing MMORPGs the wrong way to begin with. Deeper games with grouping, community, and a reason to stick around MIGHT be worth a sub if well done, but glorified single player games are not.
My feeling is this. There are boatloads of great single player games out there. There are genres and genres of games with PvP that do PvP well (IMO, MMORPG PVP is horrible and always has been). There are tons of games with MP and/or co-op elements. There are now sadly tons and tons of crappy solo-oriented/fail MMORPGs.
What there is NOT a lot of these days are true MMORPGs - modern, quality, group-based gameplay that can be enjoyed for years.
Again what boggles my mind is the fact that EQ, DAoC, FFXI and some others were successful games (and are still successful and sub-based today despite being ancient) - there was never anything wrong with the design or model for the MMORPG genre, yet for whatever reason it's like someone flipped a switch and everybody started designing casual solo-based games instead of real MMORPGs. It's like they said, we'd rather have 1-2 million players who don't give a crap and who bail within 3 months instead of 250k-500k players who LIVE in our game and stick around for years. Flashy numbers....oooh....aaah.
2. Community. This is heavily tied to #1. A bunch of soloists sharing idiotic chat and plowing thru 1000 generic quests isn't community. Real community in MMORPGs forms from sharing experiences. You don't share experiences solo, you share them in groups. If grouping is optional and a small portion of the gameplay, or limited to your guild when you raid, community doesn't really happen. In older MMORPGs that were almost entirely group-based you ended up with strong community. It happens because you're communicating in a more meaningful way about the game you're all playing, content you're sharing. When you NEED to group to play, you NEED to interact with other players in a meaningful way regularly, and THAT is where bonds form and communities develop.
It's WoW's fault. I enjoyed WoW for years and have nothing but respect for the game (although I feel Bliz went to far, dumbed it down too much, and continues to drive it into the ground, and are now lucky they have so many entrenched/clueless/loyal? fans). WoW is the ONE game that managed to blend solo and group, even if it is mostly solo, and as simple as the formula for WoW is, nobody has really managed to repeat it - BUT THEY KEEP TRYING - and nobody will repeat the success, because WoW, while it was/is a good game, was also right place right time.
WoW hit right as MMORPGs were becoming a bit more known, right as online gaming was exploding, right as high speed internet was becoming more common place, right as windows/PCs were becoming less confusing for the masses, etc. A large number of factors came together to enable WoW to be a hit. These days almost ALL games are online to some degree and there are tons of online services (not just games) pulling at potential players plus people are surgically attached to their phones, have tablets to distract them, and so on. I don't see anybody duplicating WoW's success with an MMORPG because there is simply too much competition for online attention these days.
I think going old school and narrowing focus is the more likely way to make a truly successful MMORPG these days. Something like ESO may sell a lot of units but it's like a Jersey Shore game - mindless trash for the mindless masses - the reality TV or pop music of gaming. /vomit
Maybe the Brad can pull something off with Pantheon in the unlikely event that he gets if funded. He's the one MMORPG designer who has never abandoned the genre in the name of corporate whoredom, but he's always had to have corporate ties to get anything done. Maybe a KS backed game by him could give us a quality return to old school.
3. Reputation. Also ties to #1. When everyone is solo the only people you really know are your guild and the chat loudmouths. Nobody cares how you behave. Behavior slips. You don't matter. What you do doesn't matter. When you need to group to get anything done, this flips entirely. How you play, how you behave, the social ties you make - all matter - a lot. Games that feature heavy grouping are self policing since acting like and/or being a d-bag will result in never getting groups, and when you must group to advance, it means you effectively can't play the game.
As the anonymity of the internet yields crappier and crappier people in online venues, like MMORPGs, and as companies are less and less willing to pay for quality GMing/customer support, you might think that designing games in such a way as to enable the community to police itself might be a though - or to make the more obvious leap and realize that such a thing already existed before MMORPG design went to solo hell - a hell that is partially responsible for player behavior being crappier than ever in online games, especially MMORPGs.
Premium MMORPGs do not feature built-in cheating via cash for gold pay 2 win. PLAY to win or don't play.
Funny there were few things on your list that I missed. After coming from UO, I found EQ to be everything that is flat our wrong with MMO's. I don't see how anyone could miss anything from that game ever. I guess if you like running around in a straight jacket having everything dictated to you it might be your thing. EQ was really broken and Wow fixed it to an extent, EQ II did too in some manner.
Why do people always reminisce about only the good things they remember even when the bad far out weighed the good?
#6 crowd control - yeah, it's fun, but it's hardly necessary when you solo 95% of your time in so-called massively multiplayer games!
Not a bad list but it doesn't get at the heart of the matter.
1. Grouping. MMORPGs *should* be entirely about grouping. Solo should be horribly inefficient and something you do sparingly, and if you can't group most of the time, then don't play - go play any of the bazillion single player games out there. Or play the far too many crappy wannabe MMORPGs that are weak single player games and weaker MMORPGs.
The absolute worst thing to happen to the MMORPG genre was the shift to heavily solo-based since grouping is what freaking defines the genre. It's actually mind boggling why this ever happened.
It's like companies involved in the genre decided that instead of making special and amazing games for a dedicated following that they would instead go the corporate whore route of making mind candy for the masses - going for mass appeal and numbers instead of quality and fidelity - and the types of games and the way they flow now shows how lame this is. Yeah, you get big release numbers, and games can't stay sub-based, and have huge drop offs in numbers, and are ultimately considered failures and repetitive garbage - because these types of MMORPGs *are* garbage - they're ultimately weak single player games that people play and move on.
As a side note, F2P is the second worse thing but fortunately some companies are at least attempting to get away from that sewage - not that they have much hope since they are creating solo-first games instead of real MMORPGs and no single player game occasional optional grouping will ever be worth a sub. F2P MMORPGs are fallout from designing MMORPGs the wrong way to begin with. Deeper games with grouping, community, and a reason to stick around MIGHT be worth a sub if well done, but glorified single player games are not.
My feeling is this. There are boatloads of great single player games out there. There are genres and genres of games with PvP that do PvP well (IMO, MMORPG PVP is horrible and always has been). There are tons of games with MP and/or co-op elements. There are now sadly tons and tons of crappy solo-oriented/fail MMORPGs.
What there is NOT a lot of these days are true MMORPGs - modern, quality, group-based gameplay that can be enjoyed for years.
Again what boggles my mind is the fact that EQ, DAoC, FFXI and some others were successful games (and are still successful and sub-based today despite being ancient) - there was never anything wrong with the design or model for the MMORPG genre, yet for whatever reason it's like someone flipped a switch and everybody started designing casual solo-based games instead of real MMORPGs. It's like they said, we'd rather have 1-2 million players who don't give a crap and who bail within 3 months instead of 250k-500k players who LIVE in our game and stick around for years. Flashy numbers....oooh....aaah.
2. Community. This is heavily tied to #1. A bunch of soloists sharing idiotic chat and plowing thru 1000 generic quests isn't community. Real community in MMORPGs forms from sharing experiences. You don't share experiences solo, you share them in groups. If grouping is optional and a small portion of the gameplay, or limited to your guild when you raid, community doesn't really happen. In older MMORPGs that were almost entirely group-based you ended up with strong community. It happens because you're communicating in a more meaningful way about the game you're all playing, content you're sharing. When you NEED to group to play, you NEED to interact with other players in a meaningful way regularly, and THAT is where bonds form and communities develop.
It's WoW's fault. I enjoyed WoW for years and have nothing but respect for the game (although I feel Bliz went to far, dumbed it down too much, and continues to drive it into the ground, and are now lucky they have so many entrenched/clueless/loyal? fans). WoW is the ONE game that managed to blend solo and group, even if it is mostly solo, and as simple as the formula for WoW is, nobody has really managed to repeat it - BUT THEY KEEP TRYING - and nobody will repeat the success, because WoW, while it was/is a good game, was also right place right time.
WoW hit right as MMORPGs were becoming a bit more known, right as online gaming was exploding, right as high speed internet was becoming more common place, right as windows/PCs were becoming less confusing for the masses, etc. A large number of factors came together to enable WoW to be a hit. These days almost ALL games are online to some degree and there are tons of online services (not just games) pulling at potential players plus people are surgically attached to their phones, have tablets to distract them, and so on. I don't see anybody duplicating WoW's success with an MMORPG because there is simply too much competition for online attention these days.
I think going old school and narrowing focus is the more likely way to make a truly successful MMORPG these days. Something like ESO may sell a lot of units but it's like a Jersey Shore game - mindless trash for the mindless masses - the reality TV or pop music of gaming. /vomit
Maybe the Brad can pull something off with Pantheon in the unlikely event that he gets if funded. He's the one MMORPG designer who has never abandoned the genre in the name of corporate whoredom, but he's always had to have corporate ties to get anything done. Maybe a KS backed game by him could give us a quality return to old school.
3. Reputation. Also ties to #1. When everyone is solo the only people you really know are your guild and the chat loudmouths. Nobody cares how you behave. Behavior slips. You don't matter. What you do doesn't matter. When you need to group to get anything done, this flips entirely. How you play, how you behave, the social ties you make - all matter - a lot. Games that feature heavy grouping are self policing since acting like and/or being a d-bag will result in never getting groups, and when you must group to advance, it means you effectively can't play the game.
As the anonymity of the internet yields crappier and crappier people in online venues, like MMORPGs, and as companies are less and less willing to pay for quality GMing/customer support, you might think that designing games in such a way as to enable the community to police itself might be a though - or to make the more obvious leap and realize that such a thing already existed before MMORPG design went to solo hell - a hell that is partially responsible for player behavior being crappier than ever in online games, especially MMORPGs.
Great post. Great thread! The team and I are doubling our efforts to reach out and post on all of these great threads.
--
-------------------------------------------------------------- Brad McQuaid CCO, Visionary Realms, Inc. www.pantheonmmo.com --------------------------------------------------------------
I miss all of the things in the article, but agree with Voqar that grouping, Community, and reputation are all tied into it, also. Were it me, I'd make grouping mandatory for progressin, but make it possible to achieve anything in game with a 6-man group. 40-man raids just require too much time and energy for me to fit in my life any more.
I know others like the raiding scene. That could be solved by making raid loot BoE, I think.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
Boy, do I long for those weapons I see on the ground after I've killed a bad guy.
I remember playing Dungeon Master, miles and miles of dungeons, getting lost lots of times, passing out from not finding food or water, those were the days...
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Originally posted by Voqar #6 crowd control - yeah, it's fun, but it's hardly necessary when you solo 95% of your time in so-called massively multiplayer games! Not a bad list but it doesn't get at the heart of the matter.
1. Grouping
In spite of what you might think, people do not play MMORPGs to play with other players. Not directly, anyway. Why, then, do players play MMORPGs if not to group? Easy. They want to feel like part of a world. A virtual world. And that takes us to point 2.
2. Community
It's the reason people still play ancient games like EQ, DAoC, and FFXI. To no small extent, I agree with you, but you miss the mark, especially when you mention WoW. WoW is still alive for the very same reason those other ancient games are: community. Post-WoW, as you acknowledge, the market is different, but the reason it's so hard to float isn't because of a lack of grouping. It's because of market saturation. For the world to feel alive, it must be alive.
In a saturated market (something EQ and DAoC never had to deal with), a very large population is required for a community to even form. If you have a small population of very dedicated players but only a handful of them are ever online at any given time, they won't be able to effectively play in groups. Even soloing will become boring rapidly when there's no one else around. Players need ways to interact with each other indirectly. Things like player housing, player-driven markets, crafting, and events (such as fishing contests) all make a world feel like players live in it even if you don't ever see them. It's also important that players feel they have a stake in the world. If nothing I do ever matters, leaving will never matter either. I have a ship floating in port in Puzzle Pirates. Other people can board this ship even when I'm offline. If you own a shop, people can buy from it when you're not around. These are things that make you feel like you belong. If you make friends along the way, the bonds are even stronger.
3. Reputation
This one is more directly related to player behavior itself than the reputation your behavior earns you. Players will behave the way the game encourages them. For example, League of Legends is infamous for is particularly rude and angry playerbase. The game doesn't attract angry players, though. In LoL, you are very heavily dependent on your team. If anyone on your team slips up, even once, the other team can gain a lead you may never overtake. A bad player is often much worse than an absent player. It's very frustrating to lose a match (which often takes around 30 minutes) because of someone who doesn't know what they're doing, and this causes a lot of conflict.
Another great example is resource gathering in MMOs. In WoW, imagine there is a monster in front of an ore node. I engage the monster, and another player approaches. Immediately, I am concerned that he may steal my node. If he does, there is nothing I can do to stop him. This causes me to resent his presence. I want him to leave.
Contrast GW2. I recall a very specific example. There was a spider in front of a copper node. I approached it at the same time as another player. We fought the spider together, killed it together, looted it together, and harvested the node together. Neither if us spoiled the other's rewards, and it felt good that someone else was there.
Game design can and will affect player emotions, and this will affect player behavior. If a game encourages players to be friendly, they will more likely form bonds, and these bonds, in combination with a feeling of attachment to the world, will form a community. This community is what will keep the game alive.
"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Seuss
Boy, do I long for those weapons I see on the ground after I've killed a bad guy.
I remember playing Dungeon Master, miles and miles of dungeons, getting lost lots of times, passing out from not finding food or water, those were the days...
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Lucky for me NC closed CoX and allowed me to gently fade into the night. I haven't been pulled into a MMO since in the same way.
Until recently. I found a game with community, forced grouping, complex play. But it isn't a MMO. I moved on to tabletop miniature wargaming, for me currently it is Warhammer Fantasty. Filled all my needs, progression(painting), complex play, and forced grouping. Plus no publisher will ever shut down my game and come take all my minis.XD
Originally posted by ThomasN7 The most thing I miss is a sense of community. I miss the days where you can log in and hang with your online pals, level together and help each other out on hard quests to accomplish goals. That stuff doesn't exist anymore.
The last time I felt this was Warhammer. God I miss those days. Community feels like it is all but non existant anymore in games.
What rubbish.
There are likely tens of thousands of guilds in World of Warcraft alone, not to mention all other MMOs, that do these things each and every day.
Being forced to group versus being more solo friendly hasn't done anything to affect grouping for those who want to and chose to group.
It's just an excuse people give because their friends stopped playing MMOs or are playing a different game now than them.
Good luck tilting at the windmill of "Everything's Fine" Badspock
Comments
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
I agree.
Everquest still has a stronger population than Vanguard. It is mostly at endgame though, and the trip to endgame is a lot more time consuming than Vanguard, also the UI is really showing its age.
But if you want to try EQ, perhaps wait for the next progression server to be released, so you can start on equal footing with lots of new players. Not sure if they will be doing anymore though.
I never played EQ, but was a Dark Age of Camelot player. A lot of mechanics were pretty similar. I really miss the dugeons like Stonehenge Barrow where you played parts at different levels as the article mentions about EQ dugeons. It felt great to see down a hallway and wonder what was down there, but know that soon you'd get to find out as higher level players ran past you to kill whatever was down there.
I miss having to actually work to finish a quest. Having to look for a mob or quest item and that sense of accomplishment when you did find it. Now it's a pinpoint radar that puts a neon sign over the objectives head.
You used to have to work for your levels. Now, using WoW as an example, you only really have to level tradionally up to 15. After that it's the dungeon grind. There are parts of Azeroth my son has never seen because he's spent so much time in dungeons. And he has multiple level 90's.
Not to mention crowd-controlling mace rogues that were nerfed because of PvP crybabies. A fun meaningful build in PvE ruined by the inclusion of a completely ancillary and unnecessary PvP side-activity.
The biggest thing modern MMOs need to recall from the early MMOs is a huge game world. Of course it needs to be filled and that vastly increases production time especially for a theme-park. So they just make a smaller world you see in three months expecting everyone to play end game or PvP or mini games to be happy until they add an equally small expansion.
If the world is huge and its possible to play a different race from a different starting city with a different place to level up then players don't have to invent ways to wait for the new content.
'Sandbox MMO' is a PTSD trigger word for anyone who has the experience to know that anonymous players invariably use a 'sandbox' in the same manner a housecat does.
When your head is stuck in the sand, your ass becomes the only recognizable part of you.
No game is more fun than the one you can't play, and no game is more boring than one which you've become familiar.
How to become a millionaire:
Start with a billion dollars and make an MMO.
When I played EQ it was mandatory to have a macro button programmed for trains. Something like "TRAIN coming through get out of the way!"
When you goofed up and aggroed half the mobs in the zone you had to make a beeline for the zoneline and the mobs chasing you would aggro any player along the way.
I haven't really seen that in other MMOs.
One thing to add that fits very well with these points:
Vendor diving
If you sold an item to a vendor, someone else could visit that vendor and buy it back (before the vendor inventory became full, and even then it was still buried in there somewhere). One man's trash is another man's treasure was very prevalent in EQ.
Yeah, because they kind of realized in the early 2000's that allowing a small subset of players to completely ruin the experience of an entire game's population was poor design.
Hence you see/saw the move towards more inclusion, less exclusion, more intuitive, less kludginess, and because of that the total MMO population sky rocketed, and because of the population boom (which = market expansion) you now have so many more games, and so many more options.
Yeah, older MMOs were fun, had their uniqueness and I have a lot of nostalgia, but I would never go back...
... and I bet many of you who say you wish you could would only have very fleeting feelings of happiness before you grew tired/bored of it.
#6 crowd control - yeah, it's fun, but it's hardly necessary when you solo 95% of your time in so-called massively multiplayer games!
Not a bad list but it doesn't get at the heart of the matter.
1. Grouping. MMORPGs *should* be entirely about grouping. Solo should be horribly inefficient and something you do sparingly, and if you can't group most of the time, then don't play - go play any of the bazillion single player games out there. Or play the far too many crappy wannabe MMORPGs that are weak single player games and weaker MMORPGs.
The absolute worst thing to happen to the MMORPG genre was the shift to heavily solo-based since grouping is what freaking defines the genre. It's actually mind boggling why this ever happened.
It's like companies involved in the genre decided that instead of making special and amazing games for a dedicated following that they would instead go the corporate whore route of making mind candy for the masses - going for mass appeal and numbers instead of quality and fidelity - and the types of games and the way they flow now shows how lame this is. Yeah, you get big release numbers, and games can't stay sub-based, and have huge drop offs in numbers, and are ultimately considered failures and repetitive garbage - because these types of MMORPGs *are* garbage - they're ultimately weak single player games that people play and move on.
As a side note, F2P is the second worse thing but fortunately some companies are at least attempting to get away from that sewage - not that they have much hope since they are creating solo-first games instead of real MMORPGs and no single player game occasional optional grouping will ever be worth a sub. F2P MMORPGs are fallout from designing MMORPGs the wrong way to begin with. Deeper games with grouping, community, and a reason to stick around MIGHT be worth a sub if well done, but glorified single player games are not.
My feeling is this. There are boatloads of great single player games out there. There are genres and genres of games with PvP that do PvP well (IMO, MMORPG PVP is horrible and always has been). There are tons of games with MP and/or co-op elements. There are now sadly tons and tons of crappy solo-oriented/fail MMORPGs.
What there is NOT a lot of these days are true MMORPGs - modern, quality, group-based gameplay that can be enjoyed for years.
Again what boggles my mind is the fact that EQ, DAoC, FFXI and some others were successful games (and are still successful and sub-based today despite being ancient) - there was never anything wrong with the design or model for the MMORPG genre, yet for whatever reason it's like someone flipped a switch and everybody started designing casual solo-based games instead of real MMORPGs. It's like they said, we'd rather have 1-2 million players who don't give a crap and who bail within 3 months instead of 250k-500k players who LIVE in our game and stick around for years. Flashy numbers....oooh....aaah.
2. Community. This is heavily tied to #1. A bunch of soloists sharing idiotic chat and plowing thru 1000 generic quests isn't community. Real community in MMORPGs forms from sharing experiences. You don't share experiences solo, you share them in groups. If grouping is optional and a small portion of the gameplay, or limited to your guild when you raid, community doesn't really happen. In older MMORPGs that were almost entirely group-based you ended up with strong community. It happens because you're communicating in a more meaningful way about the game you're all playing, content you're sharing. When you NEED to group to play, you NEED to interact with other players in a meaningful way regularly, and THAT is where bonds form and communities develop.
It's WoW's fault. I enjoyed WoW for years and have nothing but respect for the game (although I feel Bliz went to far, dumbed it down too much, and continues to drive it into the ground, and are now lucky they have so many entrenched/clueless/loyal? fans). WoW is the ONE game that managed to blend solo and group, even if it is mostly solo, and as simple as the formula for WoW is, nobody has really managed to repeat it - BUT THEY KEEP TRYING - and nobody will repeat the success, because WoW, while it was/is a good game, was also right place right time.
WoW hit right as MMORPGs were becoming a bit more known, right as online gaming was exploding, right as high speed internet was becoming more common place, right as windows/PCs were becoming less confusing for the masses, etc. A large number of factors came together to enable WoW to be a hit. These days almost ALL games are online to some degree and there are tons of online services (not just games) pulling at potential players plus people are surgically attached to their phones, have tablets to distract them, and so on. I don't see anybody duplicating WoW's success with an MMORPG because there is simply too much competition for online attention these days.
I think going old school and narrowing focus is the more likely way to make a truly successful MMORPG these days. Something like ESO may sell a lot of units but it's like a Jersey Shore game - mindless trash for the mindless masses - the reality TV or pop music of gaming. /vomit
Maybe the Brad can pull something off with Pantheon in the unlikely event that he gets if funded. He's the one MMORPG designer who has never abandoned the genre in the name of corporate whoredom, but he's always had to have corporate ties to get anything done. Maybe a KS backed game by him could give us a quality return to old school.
3. Reputation. Also ties to #1. When everyone is solo the only people you really know are your guild and the chat loudmouths. Nobody cares how you behave. Behavior slips. You don't matter. What you do doesn't matter. When you need to group to get anything done, this flips entirely. How you play, how you behave, the social ties you make - all matter - a lot. Games that feature heavy grouping are self policing since acting like and/or being a d-bag will result in never getting groups, and when you must group to advance, it means you effectively can't play the game.
As the anonymity of the internet yields crappier and crappier people in online venues, like MMORPGs, and as companies are less and less willing to pay for quality GMing/customer support, you might think that designing games in such a way as to enable the community to police itself might be a though - or to make the more obvious leap and realize that such a thing already existed before MMORPG design went to solo hell - a hell that is partially responsible for player behavior being crappier than ever in online games, especially MMORPGs.
Premium MMORPGs do not feature built-in cheating via cash for gold pay 2 win. PLAY to win or don't play.
Funny there were few things on your list that I missed. After coming from UO, I found EQ to be everything that is flat our wrong with MMO's. I don't see how anyone could miss anything from that game ever. I guess if you like running around in a straight jacket having everything dictated to you it might be your thing. EQ was really broken and Wow fixed it to an extent, EQ II did too in some manner.
Why do people always reminisce about only the good things they remember even when the bad far out weighed the good?
Great post. Great thread! The team and I are doubling our efforts to reach out and post on all of these great threads.
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Brad McQuaid
CCO, Visionary Realms, Inc.
www.pantheonmmo.com
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I miss all of the things in the article, but agree with Voqar that grouping, Community, and reputation are all tied into it, also. Were it me, I'd make grouping mandatory for progressin, but make it possible to achieve anything in game with a 6-man group. 40-man raids just require too much time and energy for me to fit in my life any more.
I know others like the raiding scene. That could be solved by making raid loot BoE, I think.
oh lord, must resist urge to resub.
i knew i shouldnt have read this article!
must! resist! urge!!
RIP Ribbitribbitt you are missed, kid.
Currently Playing EVE, ESO
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
Dwight D Eisenhower
My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.
Henry Rollins
Boy, do I long for those weapons I see on the ground after I've killed a bad guy.
I remember playing Dungeon Master, miles and miles of dungeons, getting lost lots of times, passing out from not finding food or water, those were the days...
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Hey, Brad. I'll be following your game.
1. Grouping
In spite of what you might think, people do not play MMORPGs to play with other players. Not directly, anyway. Why, then, do players play MMORPGs if not to group? Easy. They want to feel like part of a world. A virtual world. And that takes us to point 2.
2. Community
It's the reason people still play ancient games like EQ, DAoC, and FFXI. To no small extent, I agree with you, but you miss the mark, especially when you mention WoW. WoW is still alive for the very same reason those other ancient games are: community. Post-WoW, as you acknowledge, the market is different, but the reason it's so hard to float isn't because of a lack of grouping. It's because of market saturation. For the world to feel alive, it must be alive.
In a saturated market (something EQ and DAoC never had to deal with), a very large population is required for a community to even form. If you have a small population of very dedicated players but only a handful of them are ever online at any given time, they won't be able to effectively play in groups. Even soloing will become boring rapidly when there's no one else around. Players need ways to interact with each other indirectly. Things like player housing, player-driven markets, crafting, and events (such as fishing contests) all make a world feel like players live in it even if you don't ever see them. It's also important that players feel they have a stake in the world. If nothing I do ever matters, leaving will never matter either. I have a ship floating in port in Puzzle Pirates. Other people can board this ship even when I'm offline. If you own a shop, people can buy from it when you're not around. These are things that make you feel like you belong. If you make friends along the way, the bonds are even stronger.
3. Reputation
This one is more directly related to player behavior itself than the reputation your behavior earns you. Players will behave the way the game encourages them. For example, League of Legends is infamous for is particularly rude and angry playerbase. The game doesn't attract angry players, though. In LoL, you are very heavily dependent on your team. If anyone on your team slips up, even once, the other team can gain a lead you may never overtake. A bad player is often much worse than an absent player. It's very frustrating to lose a match (which often takes around 30 minutes) because of someone who doesn't know what they're doing, and this causes a lot of conflict.
Another great example is resource gathering in MMOs. In WoW, imagine there is a monster in front of an ore node. I engage the monster, and another player approaches. Immediately, I am concerned that he may steal my node. If he does, there is nothing I can do to stop him. This causes me to resent his presence. I want him to leave.
Contrast GW2. I recall a very specific example. There was a spider in front of a copper node. I approached it at the same time as another player. We fought the spider together, killed it together, looted it together, and harvested the node together. Neither if us spoiled the other's rewards, and it felt good that someone else was there.
Game design can and will affect player emotions, and this will affect player behavior. If a game encourages players to be friendly, they will more likely form bonds, and these bonds, in combination with a feeling of attachment to the world, will form a community. This community is what will keep the game alive.
"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Seuss
Boy, do I long for those weapons I see on the ground after I've killed a bad guy.
I remember playing Dungeon Master, miles and miles of dungeons, getting lost lots of times, passing out from not finding food or water, those were the days...
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
The world has moved on.
Lucky for me NC closed CoX and allowed me to gently fade into the night. I haven't been pulled into a MMO since in the same way.
Until recently. I found a game with community, forced grouping, complex play. But it isn't a MMO. I moved on to tabletop miniature wargaming, for me currently it is Warhammer Fantasty. Filled all my needs, progression(painting), complex play, and forced grouping. Plus no publisher will ever shut down my game and come take all my minis.XD
I didn't play EQ, I went from SP games, Muds and CS to Anarchy Online and then Eve Online.
dying - it mattered, it had consequences, now a days it's irrelevant and inconsequential.
Random Mission Generator - I've only ever seen this in AO, and it was so simple in its implementation, but so much fun.
Community - IMHO these have generally changed for the worse as well, players seem to be more jaded and bitter, less friendly.
Good luck tilting at the windmill of "Everything's Fine" Badspock
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011