If you are going to build a game where leveling is the major focus of the game and you reach 50 in 3-4 weeks max, you are going to have a high turnover. There needs to be more to a game than max leveling, meaningful crafting, guild HQ, housing, end game. The PvP in the game, the end game, one of the driving reasons to buy the game, is not working. Lag is so bad right now that people are running min video specs and having to log just to reset the game to run above 10fps.
All this aside there is one thing that killed the longevity of MMO's is social networking, facebook, twitter, texting and so on down the line. In the beginning your MMO was the social network, you could play a game, chat, interior design, build, craft or just hang out on the grassy knoll and talk about other people.
If you build a game today it has to be robust and offer more than the leveling experience, if it does not, you have high turnover.
Is it dying? That’s a premature assessment. Is it suffering and bedridden? Yes. On life-support? No… not yet. If console release doesn’t bring in a ton of sales, however, I suspect the coffin lid will be nailed down even if the body is still somewhat warm at the time.
Reality bites… the reactions by players to the game are, IMHO, largely a backlash against the deceptive marketing tactics used by ZOS. As such, I have no sympathy for them. My sympathies are for Elder Scrolls aficionados who’d hoped for a good game and got what was evidently intended to be DAoC II with an Elder Scrolls skin, and for DAoC aficionados who’d hoped for a good game and got a quest-grinder with mediocre AvAvA PvP instead. Player reactions should have been expected; gamers are not as stupid as developers – especially the marketing staffs within game developing companies – want to believe them to be. We all expect lies from marketers; in today’s world we have no choice but to be jaundiced in our expectations for truth in advertising; and perhaps that’s more true in gaming than in any other consumer-focused industry. But we don’t expect abject lies.
When the NDA was lifted on closed Beta, we heard tons of complaints from disgruntled testers. To some extent, this is expected for any new game development, but usually there is an equal amount of praise from other testers. What was clear – to me at least, given my perspective from decades of experience – was that Beta testing for ESO had been primarily a tool used by the marketers to elicit future sales. Beta testers were largely members of those big gaming guilds out there and the marketers presumed that would lead to sales. However, that strategy seemed to backfire. Large numbers of Beta testers claimed that the development team didn’t listen to what the testers said (which actually is a good thing; testers aren’t developers, no matter what they want to believe themselves to be); and, most importantly, didn’t react to bug reports.
There is evidence that lots of preorders were cancelled, evidence in both lots of forum posts on many sites and in ZOS’ subsequent actions that can only be categorized as “damage control”.
The first open Beta weekend was a mess, excused by many as due to use of an old release of the software. Open Beta’s serve only one real purpose, to introduce the product to a wider market and increase sales. There isn’t adequate time between an open Beta even and release to fix any real problems, so it’s not an actual test of the software or architecture. Given that reality, who uses a defective version of a product to increase sales?
There is evidence that strategy backfired, too. I suspect that instead of engendering more preorders, it caused more cancellations. Damage control actions continued and ZOS promptly declared they knew the cause of all the bugs (phasing) and decided they’d have an additional open Beta. Yes, a lot of the phasing problems were resolved in that release. Other problems weren’t. Given that players weren’t going to advance too many levels while just playing in an open Beta weekend, ZOS probably expected that those problems weren’t going to be discovered.
However, those problems surfaced after release. Tons of bugs ate away at any pretense of fun, and fun is why we play games. Not just a few bugs; but tons of bugs: NPCs that spoke German in the English release of the game (fine; I read, write, and speak German; but do most players?); falling through the world; bank problems; skills that wouldn’t fire or apparently did nothing at all; class imbalance, class imbalance, class imbalance… on and on; add to that some really idiotic and questionable game design decisions and game mechanics that play-testing should have immediately pointed out as unworkable (e.g., their version of phasing and their hybrid skill-class system)… I don’t think there was any doubt in anyone’s mind that the game wasn’t ready for release.
In my case, the game crashed repeatedly – HARD crashes, not soft crashes – so frequently that the game became unplayable. Other players had their own problems; lots of players and lots of problems… so we cancelled subscriptions. Shouldn't that have been expected? Or were the management team and marketers so arrogant as to believe the gamers just wouldn't notice the problems with the game? If so, that was an extraordinary degree of arrogance...
Will we come back?
I will if the game is ever properly re-released. I will happily pay a subscription. I do not want F2P or B2P because I’ve seen firsthand too many times how that destroys good games, but I will not pay for a bad game. I suspect many others feel the same way.
However, I also suspect that many of us have no faith in ZOS, given its reputation so far (and they only have the reputation from one MMORPG development) and given its continued use of paid posters in forums, and unless they somehow instill confidence that they can turn this mess around, the game population will continue to erode. They aren’t going to get enough new players to replace those who are leaving unless the reputation of the game changes dramatically; they aren’t going to get enough console sales to sustain the game.
I give them credit for their bug fixes, although it’s hard to reconcile all those claims by posters in forums that there are no bugs in the game when patches are huge. Gamers are not as stupid as developers want to believe them to be. Maybe someday developers and marketers will understand that. Phony posters in forums don't convince us that the realities we experienced were something other than what they were.
They have shot themselves in the foot. Poor integrity tends to do that. Unless they bring in a new management team, things aren’t going to change.
Played beta, wasn't impressed but I got it anyway hoping it would get better. I found this to be a pretty standard MMO, nothing new really, noting overly interesting. Really nice graphics but as for the rest of the game, meh. Not worth a purchase price and a monthly fee. I'll try again when it goes F2P.
Bought the game once the price dropped and I'm addicted. Im sure once I get to Veteran ranks Ill face the same issues as others, but I really love the combat, story and atmosphere.
Don't understand the complaints I see about the classes and builds since regular ES games were very similar in the fact that you could be anything and should be good at everything, especially in Morrowind.
I think for those that didnt enjoy the experience at all, they just didnt know what they were getting themselves into....either they never played ES games or only played the last one.
As for endgame, Im not there yet....still experiencing all 3 faction stories and worlds with 3 different toons, but try to remember that many mmo's that come out have limited endgame for at least 6 months to a year. That's why I love alts
I knew ESO was in trouble the minute I realized I loved the game. Been playing since launch and have no intentions of quitting in the near future. History has proven that me enjoying an MMO is a kiss of death....
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
Of course its dying that was pretty much a given though. Completely based around a story that effectively ends and no end game. It's not really an MMOG, its a standard RPG where you can see other people playing too.
As for endgame, Im not there yet....still experiencing all 3 faction stories and worlds with 3 different toons, but try to remember that many mmo's that come out have limited endgame for at least 6 months to a year. That's why I love alts
Big mistake. Just launch the veteran ranks grind. The game will force you to do this content, don't worry.
Originally posted by remyburke I knew ESO was in trouble the minute I realized I loved the game. Been playing since launch and have no intentions of quitting in the near future. History has proven that me enjoying an MMO is a kiss of death....
So what do you do? Obviously at this point, since you played from release, you musty have a character or 2 at max VR, even if you are very casual. I mean there is literally no end game except for unbalanced PvP.
Still best MMO I played so far, only negative its to easy to level, im soon at cap and never have I been so fast at getting there. No grind in the game like in other "kill 20 sandpeople" mmos though and thats probably why....
Originally posted by remyburke I knew ESO was in trouble the minute I realized I loved the game. Been playing since launch and have no intentions of quitting in the near future. History has proven that me enjoying an MMO is a kiss of death....
So what do you do? Obviously at this point, since you played from release, you musty have a character or 2 at max VR, even if you are very casual. I mean there is literally no end game except for unbalanced PvP.
I have a lvl 45 and a V1 currently. Trying to max out my crafting skills as well. Still plenty to do.
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
They just need to have a F2P model to have a second boom of players. SWTOR is the role-model for this. Had they not added a F2P model, they would have been closed by now.
If it is dying, it's probably because of the same reason every other modern MMO dies...
There probably just isn't much to do in the end game. PvP is always fun, but even that gets old... especially if PvP is dedicated to certain areas or time.
There just isn't enough goals in most MMOs. We've all been there and done that.
I played in the Betas and that was not enough to sucker me into buying into the game. It had too many issues for me to waste my time contending with plus some of the core development choices were just plain bad. I have kept up with the development but it just doesn't seem to get any better. ESO was supposed to be a new and fresh approach to the MMORPG arena but unfortunately I didn't see any of that. I play MMOs to have fun not relog, /reloadui, watch bots and not be able to group with my friends. I really wanted ESO to be a good game I could play for a long time to come but it just is not that game for me in it's current form.
I did read the whole article but i admit, i stopped taking it seriously as soon as the claim was made that ESO has the best graphics of any MMO released so far, i mean really...
All my friends got max lvl in no time which I made me not buy ESO. I played the beta and such, but I didnt feel like anything was worth. IMO Runescape's leveling system was extremely long and expensive and when I got 99 of something I felt that i was the few out of the many. I wish games focus more on the grind instead of adding hardmode version of raids or advance dungeons.
Bought the game once the price dropped and I'm addicted. Im sure once I get to Veteran ranks Ill face the same issues as others, but I really love the combat, story and atmosphere.
Don't understand the complaints I see about the classes and builds since regular ES games were very similar in the fact that you could be anything and should be good at everything, especially in Morrowind.
I think for those that didnt enjoy the experience at all, they just didnt know what they were getting themselves into....either they never played ES games or only played the last one.
As for endgame, Im not there yet....still experiencing all 3 faction stories and worlds with 3 different toons, but try to remember that many mmo's that come out have limited endgame for at least 6 months to a year. That's why I love alts
Same here as in it's gonna take a long time before a reach VR level
ESO is actually the first game I love getting into alts. My main reason hwoever was due to experiance I already knew from the start not to get to end game to soon. No MMORPG has ever created a good endgame. Short after release and people where already VR within a few weeks in ESO. Most likely people who never played on release day and might have experianced end game in other MMORPG's they might have started playing months after it's release.
I really enjoy the game, it's a themepark and I will treat it as such. People seem to expecting allot of sand in ESO which is understandable due to previous ES games that brought some sand in the game, still themepark unless you got into mods.
There is allot of similar ES freedom in ESO yet you never hear people talk about it. All we keep reading is beginners issue's when released. Just read some guy and his wife leaving due to botters, geuss they will not be playing MMORPG ever again. Besides that I haven't seen bots for atleast +month now which is what to expect with a new released game. Yet people continue to use bots as one of hte main reason they left?
As said I enjoy the game, seeing the people ingame doesn't make me worry if the game is dying, yes plenty of people have left, but to be honost I could care less about people who rush cap lvl within a month of a MMO and leave because they are bored. No developer can battle those rushers....unless you make a game more like WOW as it seems.
It is a great game and I enjoyed it since beta and played retail some but a themepark is a themepark ... Graphics are not enough to make me stay in the end especially when the core is just the same as all the other themepark games I have played.
I can get the core gaming from many other titles with better end game. The story line was nice and like swtor, in pvp I had a lot of fun but still was not enough to keep me. I get burned out when I have to quest up as the eso xp for grinding was pretty lame whenever I tried it.
You know you are old when the dev's on the games you play are almost young enough to be your grand-kids.
This is why I quit using this shitty website, either you buy a review or they post front page nonsense claiming your game is dying and the circlejerk community comes in cheering on the death of anything that isn't WoW.
Comments
If you are going to build a game where leveling is the major focus of the game and you reach 50 in 3-4 weeks max, you are going to have a high turnover. There needs to be more to a game than max leveling, meaningful crafting, guild HQ, housing, end game. The PvP in the game, the end game, one of the driving reasons to buy the game, is not working. Lag is so bad right now that people are running min video specs and having to log just to reset the game to run above 10fps.
All this aside there is one thing that killed the longevity of MMO's is social networking, facebook, twitter, texting and so on down the line. In the beginning your MMO was the social network, you could play a game, chat, interior design, build, craft or just hang out on the grassy knoll and talk about other people.
If you build a game today it has to be robust and offer more than the leveling experience, if it does not, you have high turnover.
Is it dying? That’s a premature assessment. Is it suffering and bedridden? Yes. On life-support? No… not yet. If console release doesn’t bring in a ton of sales, however, I suspect the coffin lid will be nailed down even if the body is still somewhat warm at the time.
Reality bites… the reactions by players to the game are, IMHO, largely a backlash against the deceptive marketing tactics used by ZOS. As such, I have no sympathy for them. My sympathies are for Elder Scrolls aficionados who’d hoped for a good game and got what was evidently intended to be DAoC II with an Elder Scrolls skin, and for DAoC aficionados who’d hoped for a good game and got a quest-grinder with mediocre AvAvA PvP instead. Player reactions should have been expected; gamers are not as stupid as developers – especially the marketing staffs within game developing companies – want to believe them to be. We all expect lies from marketers; in today’s world we have no choice but to be jaundiced in our expectations for truth in advertising; and perhaps that’s more true in gaming than in any other consumer-focused industry. But we don’t expect abject lies.
When the NDA was lifted on closed Beta, we heard tons of complaints from disgruntled testers. To some extent, this is expected for any new game development, but usually there is an equal amount of praise from other testers. What was clear – to me at least, given my perspective from decades of experience – was that Beta testing for ESO had been primarily a tool used by the marketers to elicit future sales. Beta testers were largely members of those big gaming guilds out there and the marketers presumed that would lead to sales. However, that strategy seemed to backfire. Large numbers of Beta testers claimed that the development team didn’t listen to what the testers said (which actually is a good thing; testers aren’t developers, no matter what they want to believe themselves to be); and, most importantly, didn’t react to bug reports.
There is evidence that lots of preorders were cancelled, evidence in both lots of forum posts on many sites and in ZOS’ subsequent actions that can only be categorized as “damage control”.
The first open Beta weekend was a mess, excused by many as due to use of an old release of the software. Open Beta’s serve only one real purpose, to introduce the product to a wider market and increase sales. There isn’t adequate time between an open Beta even and release to fix any real problems, so it’s not an actual test of the software or architecture. Given that reality, who uses a defective version of a product to increase sales?
There is evidence that strategy backfired, too. I suspect that instead of engendering more preorders, it caused more cancellations. Damage control actions continued and ZOS promptly declared they knew the cause of all the bugs (phasing) and decided they’d have an additional open Beta. Yes, a lot of the phasing problems were resolved in that release. Other problems weren’t. Given that players weren’t going to advance too many levels while just playing in an open Beta weekend, ZOS probably expected that those problems weren’t going to be discovered.
However, those problems surfaced after release. Tons of bugs ate away at any pretense of fun, and fun is why we play games. Not just a few bugs; but tons of bugs: NPCs that spoke German in the English release of the game (fine; I read, write, and speak German; but do most players?); falling through the world; bank problems; skills that wouldn’t fire or apparently did nothing at all; class imbalance, class imbalance, class imbalance… on and on; add to that some really idiotic and questionable game design decisions and game mechanics that play-testing should have immediately pointed out as unworkable (e.g., their version of phasing and their hybrid skill-class system)… I don’t think there was any doubt in anyone’s mind that the game wasn’t ready for release.
In my case, the game crashed repeatedly – HARD crashes, not soft crashes – so frequently that the game became unplayable. Other players had their own problems; lots of players and lots of problems… so we cancelled subscriptions. Shouldn't that have been expected? Or were the management team and marketers so arrogant as to believe the gamers just wouldn't notice the problems with the game? If so, that was an extraordinary degree of arrogance...
Will we come back?
I will if the game is ever properly re-released. I will happily pay a subscription. I do not want F2P or B2P because I’ve seen firsthand too many times how that destroys good games, but I will not pay for a bad game. I suspect many others feel the same way.
However, I also suspect that many of us have no faith in ZOS, given its reputation so far (and they only have the reputation from one MMORPG development) and given its continued use of paid posters in forums, and unless they somehow instill confidence that they can turn this mess around, the game population will continue to erode. They aren’t going to get enough new players to replace those who are leaving unless the reputation of the game changes dramatically; they aren’t going to get enough console sales to sustain the game.
I give them credit for their bug fixes, although it’s hard to reconcile all those claims by posters in forums that there are no bugs in the game when patches are huge. Gamers are not as stupid as developers want to believe them to be. Maybe someday developers and marketers will understand that. Phony posters in forums don't convince us that the realities we experienced were something other than what they were.
They have shot themselves in the foot. Poor integrity tends to do that. Unless they bring in a new management team, things aren’t going to change.
Bought the game once the price dropped and I'm addicted. Im sure once I get to Veteran ranks Ill face the same issues as others, but I really love the combat, story and atmosphere.
Don't understand the complaints I see about the classes and builds since regular ES games were very similar in the fact that you could be anything and should be good at everything, especially in Morrowind.
I think for those that didnt enjoy the experience at all, they just didnt know what they were getting themselves into....either they never played ES games or only played the last one.
As for endgame, Im not there yet....still experiencing all 3 faction stories and worlds with 3 different toons, but try to remember that many mmo's that come out have limited endgame for at least 6 months to a year. That's why I love alts
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
Lapsed subs after 3rd month, and out and about for summer months. Will be a toss up between re-subbing TESO or FFFXIVarr.
Teso could be great for PvP when the server wasn't lagging out. FFXIV doesn't have any PvP on the scale of other MMOs, though it runs real smooth.
I logged into my old Aion account recently, but couldnt get motivated to play. I wonder if returning to TESO will feel the same.
Big mistake. Just launch the veteran ranks grind. The game will force you to do this content, don't worry.
So what do you do? Obviously at this point, since you played from release, you musty have a character or 2 at max VR, even if you are very casual. I mean there is literally no end game except for unbalanced PvP.
Im not playing right now, still subbed though.
Because its SUMMER for f**** sake.....
Still best MMO I played so far, only negative its to easy to level, im soon at cap and never have I been so fast at getting there. No grind in the game like in other "kill 20 sandpeople" mmos though and thats probably why....
I have a lvl 45 and a V1 currently. Trying to max out my crafting skills as well. Still plenty to do.
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
If it is dying, it's probably because of the same reason every other modern MMO dies...
There probably just isn't much to do in the end game. PvP is always fun, but even that gets old... especially if PvP is dedicated to certain areas or time.
There just isn't enough goals in most MMOs. We've all been there and done that.
people still play console?
sorry that is for another thread I just could not resist.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Same here as in it's gonna take a long time before a reach VR level
ESO is actually the first game I love getting into alts. My main reason hwoever was due to experiance I already knew from the start not to get to end game to soon. No MMORPG has ever created a good endgame. Short after release and people where already VR within a few weeks in ESO. Most likely people who never played on release day and might have experianced end game in other MMORPG's they might have started playing months after it's release.
I really enjoy the game, it's a themepark and I will treat it as such. People seem to expecting allot of sand in ESO which is understandable due to previous ES games that brought some sand in the game, still themepark unless you got into mods.
There is allot of similar ES freedom in ESO yet you never hear people talk about it. All we keep reading is beginners issue's when released. Just read some guy and his wife leaving due to botters, geuss they will not be playing MMORPG ever again. Besides that I haven't seen bots for atleast +month now which is what to expect with a new released game. Yet people continue to use bots as one of hte main reason they left?
As said I enjoy the game, seeing the people ingame doesn't make me worry if the game is dying, yes plenty of people have left, but to be honost I could care less about people who rush cap lvl within a month of a MMO and leave because they are bored. No developer can battle those rushers....unless you make a game more like WOW as it seems.
It is a great game and I enjoyed it since beta and played retail some but a themepark is a themepark ... Graphics are not enough to make me stay in the end especially when the core is just the same as all the other themepark games I have played.
I can get the core gaming from many other titles with better end game. The story line was nice and like swtor, in pvp I had a lot of fun but still was not enough to keep me. I get burned out when I have to quest up as the eso xp for grinding was pretty lame whenever I tried it.
You know you are old when the dev's on the games you play are almost young enough to be your grand-kids.